Fred Estby like the bands he has played in needs no introduction, and if he does, well you aren’t really too familiar with your old school Death Metal. Both Carnage and Dismember have featured Estby’s unique skinbeating, and with the likes of “Dark Recollections”, “Like An Ever Flowing Stream” and six other Dismember albums under his belt there isn’t a lot people can tell him about how to create old school Death Metal.

Conspicuous by his absence from the world of Death Metal, true to form you can’t keep a good man down and Estby returns with his latest Deathly incarnation, Necronaut. Unlike anything we’ve seen before this is a sort of Death Metal super-group; a who is who of some of the biggest names in the genre if you will. With vocals being provided by the likes of Chris Reifert, Hellbutcher, Tompa Lindberg, Nicke Andersson and Joakim Nilsson ad guitar duties being filled in by David Blomqvist, Tyrant, Robert Pehrsson and Uffe Cederlund it’s more a question of who did he miss rather than who should he have included.

It’s testimony to Estby’s vision and undoubted talent that he not only provided all the drum, bass and rhythm guitar tracks for the album but also the record flows remarkably well considering the numerous contributors. Necronaut is an absolute wet dream of old school Death Metal and even the genres more clichéd aspects work in the context of this album. Moments of Bathory, Venom and even Sabbath influences permeate their way into the record, and makes for an eclectic but enjoyable album.

Unpolished and raw, deliberately so you feel, Estby unquestionably made the decision to try to (re)create a sound in keeping with the early Gothenburg scene from which he rose. With super bass-heavy production the album has a crude feeling to it which is totally in keeping with the almost evil malevolence the album has. So much more fulfilling than much of the conveyer belt of extreme metal we’re subjected to today, and a total must for fans of Entombed, Autopsy, Bathory, Venom or any old school Death Metal band you care to mention.