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Germany's occult Death Metallers Necros Christos have always been highly ranked in my unholy book of extreme Metal. Everything they touch turns to pitch-black and I mean this in the most positive way.

As good as Necros Christos' Triune Impurity Rites (2007) and Doom of the Occult (2011) were, they seem to have found another, higher level of occultism and filthiness on their third album Nine Graves. Necros Christos have always put more stock in simplicity and stripped-down song structures and it has always paid off. Nine Graves continues this trend that separates Necros Christos from the Death Metal masses and further distills the band's evilness to its purest form and supports it with some excellent doomy passages (à la Incantation, Autopsy and Abhorrence) and wicked piercing riffs. Mors Dalos Ra's demonic grunts are truly some of the best extreme vocals you can hear these days.

"Black Bone Crucifix," "Va Koram Do Rex Satan," "Baptized by the Black Urine of the Deceased" and the title track, "Nine Graves," are the real songs on the album with the rest being instrumental preludes, interludes or postludes. "GATE: Solh" sounds a bit like a campfire song played by a bunch of gypsies, celebrating a marriage of a young couple (or maybe just sodomy and lust, your choice).

Nine Graves is Necros Christos' strongest tour de force so far. Death Metal has no boundaries for this band and they have proved that on this record. Amazing stuff from a great fuckin' band.