The Necromancers – Servants Of The Salem Girl – Album Review

What happens when you mix Black Sabbath and Motörhead with a dash of Iron Maiden, toss in the modern hard rock sensibilities of Volbeat and Ghost and add a pinch of the eerie 70s cult vibes that Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats has found success with in recent years? One outcome would very likely sound something like the debut album by French rockers, The Necromancers, with Servants of the Salem Girl consisting of six tracks of doomy, psyched-out rock that makes for a damn good time and a load of future potential!

Slow, doomy riffs fight with faster, catchier hard rock riffs for the makeup of the tunes here and there’s more than enough variety to keep us guessing. Though a bit more on the hard rock side, the highlight of the album, “Black Marble House,” features a good blend of the noted styles. We’re treated to a clean intro that wouldn’t be out of place on a Tool record and the catchy, dissonant riff that follows is capped by verses of clean strummed chords and a dancing bassline. Vocalist/guitarist Tom Cornière offsets restrained singing in the verses with Lemmy-like bellowing in the chorus. It’s a catchy and uptempo, yet retains a creepiness that makes it fairly unique and it’s a great example of what the band has to offer.

In case you couldn’t tell by the album and song names, the lyrics are steeped in the tried-and-true rock n’ roll fascination with witchcraft and devilry; a throwback to a more primitive age of heavy music perhaps but surprisingly the music itself doesn’t always jive with the theme of the words. Cornière could just as easily be singing about girls and fast cars, but frankly that’s part of what makes Servants of the Salem Girl so damn appealing.

As we’ve mentioned, it seems like The Necromancers are on the verge of either slightly blasphemous hard rock – the kind that’s relatively popular on mainstream radio airwaves today – or refined, yet doomy psychedelic cult rock. Perhaps they’ll continue to split between these two styles on future release? Whichever way they go, they have massive potential and are a young band to keep a serious eye on!  7/10

Servants of the Salem Girl will be released on August 18 via Ripple Music.

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