As you may guess from the title, Necro’s music is a lot like a gory horror movie – decapitations, spilled organs, severed limbs and massive flesh wounds. Actually, you’d have to cross that with a low budget porn complete with bondage, fisting and sticking foreign objects in women’s asses. Get the picture? Necro is little more than sex and violence – both taken to an absolute extreme – and he makes no apologies for it. If you don’t wanna hear how many ways he can kill you with a rusty screw driver and fuck your girl with the same, then don’t listen.
People do though, Necro’s tales of blood spilling macabre has earned him a moderate and rabidly dedicated fan base. If your like myself and find his subject matter a bit nauseating after a couple songs, there is still something for you; hard and incredibly rugged beats. As anyone who has heard tracks like “Fucking Head Split,” “Underground” or “Refuse To Lose” will tell you, Necro is perhaps the most overlooked producer in hip-hop. “Brutality Vol.1” is no exception, joined by half brother Ill Bill, Goretex, Q-Unique and Mr. Hyde, he delivers 17 tracks of smacking drums and dark, eerie samples.
Right off the bat Necro’s production takes shape. “I’m Your Idol” is evil but “Dopesick” is the shit that you could score your nightmares with. “White Slavery” w/ Ill Bill is one of the albums better tracks, both for it’s beats and topic. Necro is much better when his rhymes are topical rather than just random references and threats of gore; which, at times, can get very tiresome. By the time he runs through 5 solo tracks at the end of the album, there is really no more violent threats that can be made that are going to sound fresh or original.
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The best moments on the LP come when Necro shares mic time, like the aforementioned “Dopesick” with Goretex. “Reign In Blood” with Ill Bill is little more than the title offers, but “Our Life” is a much better indication of what the duo is really capable of, and why they are capable of it. While Necro offers “I used to watch how my pops would treat a girl/and beef with the world, he had a bone to pick/that’s why my dome is sick/it rubbed off on me/cause the apple don’t fall far from the tree, G/you cats keep your distance/cause your scared I might flip in an instant/when I was filled with innocence/I was still committing sins,” Ill Bill counters with “Hey yo, I grew up in the motherfucking projects/my mom said since my pop left we had to get a section 8 apartment/the rents cheap/I see decepticons at least 10 deep/run up on me, flip and wanna set beef/that was some faggot shit so me and my brother went for dolo/the only two white kids up in my prejects that wasn’t homo.” Ill Bill also gets a nice solo offering on the violin-laced “Swordfish.” Mr. Hyde represents well on “Street Veteran,” which also features on of the album’s best beats. Why more artists aren’t tapping Necro for beats is beyond me. That is even more of a mystery after hearing “The Big Sleep” with Goretex. I can’t do the beat justice by describing it.
There is really no doubt that the strength of this album lies in the production. Unless you are a masochist like Necro, chances are you will grow weary of the subject matter. The hooks are often overly obnoxious and I think that the songs could have been sequenced a bit better. Yet, once again Necro has made an album that will get multiple spins if anything, just for his production value. When it comes to crafting dark, rugged beats very few can step to Necro.
