Bandcamp Graufar have the songs. That is the first thing to establish about Via Necropolis, the second album from the Linz quartet, because everything else here is in service of it and, occasionally, at war with it. This is melodic blackened death metal in the confident middle of the style, the kind of band that won the Austrian Wacken Metal Battle in 2024 and played the main festival off the back of it, and the writing has the tightness you would expect from that. The cover, a vast ink-drawn necropolis with Charon poling his boat across the dead water, tells you the register: this is death as landscape, transience and the road out, no Satanic posturing, just the weight of the end.
The riffs carry it. “Heralds of Doom” is the clearest win, and tellingly it is also the best-sounding track: atmospheric synths tucked cleanly behind biting, well-defined guitars, a bass that stays growling and present in the mids without smearing the low end, drums that hit with a modern, direct punch. When the mix lets the arrangement breathe like this, Graufar sound genuinely commanding, the melodic lead work and the blackened aggression pulling in the same direction. “Buried in Flames” keeps its articulation even at speed thanks to hard gating and precise editing, and the eight-and-a-half-minute closer “Foltertrog” opens spacious and dynamic before the eruption, showing a band that knows how to build.
The reservation is the master, and it is a modern one. Too much of Via Necropolis has been pushed hard for maximum loudness, and on “Blizzard & Blaze,” “Via Necropolis” and “On Your Knees” the bus compression squeezes the life out of the drums, the transients flattened, the low mids stacking into a fatiguing wall on repeat plays. “Charon” is the rawest of them, mid-forward and harsh in the top end, the bass sinking to a contourless rumble. This is not a genre-tradition rawness the way a lo-fi black metal record earns its murk; it is a contemporary loudness-war choice, and it works against songs that are dynamic enough to deserve better. The band and their engineer clearly know how to make it sound great, because “Heralds of Doom” proves it. They just did not extend that touch across the whole record.
Via Necropolis is a strong, well-played, unpretentious blackened death record from a band with real momentum and no wasted motion in the writing. The Charon-and-necropolis theme is delivered with atmosphere rather than edgelord posturing, the melodic instinct is genuine, and the aggression never feels borrowed. It is held back from something better only by a master that mistakes loud for heavy, on music that is already heavy enough. Turn it up, and imagine the version with the ceiling raised.
Standout tracks: Heralds of Doom, Foltertrog, Buried in Flames
