Necrotesque – Et Mortui Resurgent

Written by on 23-07-2026 at 13:01.

The grass isn’t always greener on the other side, so I keep a close eye and ear on the Dutch and Flemish extreme metal scene. In my experience, death or black metal from my own backyard is generally at least as good as the work fired at us by all those big names from American forests or swamps, French banlieues, Polish caves, Norwegian mountains, Finnish lakes, or those cute red houses in Sweden. One of those tasty treats from close to home is death metal outfit Necrotesque. The bald-headed crew from Noord-Brabant cannot be stopped and, after two EPs and a debut album, now deliver a new effort: Et Mortui Resurgent, which means something along the lines of And the Dead Shall Rise.

Necrotesque plays death metal. A full stop after that sentence could already end this review, because in a nutshell, that is simply what it is. Death metal. The drums roll, the bass thunders, the guitar growls, and cutting through it all is Lodewijk van Doorn’s gravel-bin grunt: almost forty minutes of old-school death metal. The album opens with a punch to the face called Entrails on the Rails, before a backing vocalist suddenly appears in the following title track. That gave me quite a start. Although I welcome the variety, I’m not sure this was the best option. I’d honestly rather just hear Van Doorn scream, as he does in Patricide, or growl, as at the start of Born from a Necrowomb. That track is definitely one of the album’s highlights, strongly reminiscent of fellow skull-crushers Graceless.

Where the gentlemen of Graceless sometimes take a turn toward doom, there is no such thing with Necrotesque: it is full speed ahead into more, with Horror! as the clearest example, as drummer Harald Bouten kicks the pace up yet again in the second half of the song. By then my upper lip has already curled into a triangle, my eyebrows have formed a frown, and the rest of my head is shaking nonstop: it’s demolition time!

With Norwood 6(66), the band cheerfully ploughs on: even on its fourth release, Necrotesque has no intention of easing off the gas. “Kalle koppen niet te stoppen! (Bald heads cannot be stopped!),” Van Doorn rightly roars at the top of his lungs. The ball of destruction reaches another high point with The Sadist King and Roidraged Executioner, in which Arjan Jansen conjures a mighty riff from his guitar and Dave Blummel lays down a solid foundation with a rumbling bass. The tempo goes up, and once again there is a song that, at excessive volume, would shake the plaster right off the wall.

Et Mortui Resurgent is a fine next step in the career of Necrotesque, a band that gains strength with every release. At first listen it may not all sound that impressive, but I would say: try making a wrecking ball like Plague of the North yourself. Fire in eyes!/They strike fast!/All is taken!/No one survives! Bonus points, by the way, for the audio sample in the intro to A Dead End, featuring badass Ray Shoesmith, the hitman from the Australian dark comedy series Mr Inbetween. On to more, assholes!

 

Score:

88/100

Label:

Grotesque Metal Productions, 2026

Tracklisting:

  1. Entrails on the Rails
  2. Et Mortui Resurgent
  3. Patricide
  4. Born from a Necrowomb
  5. Horror!
  6. Norwood 6(66)
  7. The Sadist King
  8. Roidraged Executioner
  9. Plague of the North
  10. A Dead End

Line-up:

  • Lodewijk van Doorn – Vocals
  • Arjan Jansen – Guitar
  • Dave Blummel – Bass
  • Harald Bouten – Drums

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