Well... this is a weird one. Necronomidol is one of the many groups inspired by the meteoric success of Babymetal, blending the idol culture of J-pop with heavy metal in some form. Babymetal took the easy route and blended it with already poppy forms of melodeath and such, but Necronomidol take a much more avant-garde approach to the idea. The actual songwriting was handled by three different people, two dudes who are apparently fairly well known in the extreme weird subcircles of the Japanese underground, and... Dan Terminus? Yeah, the really loud synthwave guy with the super colorful album covers like Automated Refrains. So yeah, this is going to be a weird one.
And honestly, the biggest flaw here is that it isn't weird enough. Taking a traditional five-member J-pop girl group and throwing them in a hellish void of strange extremity seems like it should be a home run based on novelty alone, but VOIDHYMN (actually their third album, which is strange because when researching the band I discovered that they're apparently a Big Fucking Deal in the idol scene but I'd never heard of them prior to this promo spawning in my inbox like a fucking SCP) only goes full out with it a few times. I think part of the problem is simply that I'm the wrong audience for this, because as a general rule I don't really care for aesthetics and performance outside of recorded material, and considering the genre this spawned from, that's where most of the effort goes. Their elaborate outfits, stage shows, music videos, and inherent celebrity status in their home country is where most of their appeal lies, and none of that shit matters to me. I'm a stupid headbanger, I like big dumb riffs, I don't care how subversive it is for these five sex symbols to dress in bondage and sing about cosmic horror. Unless you're GWAR or something I'm really just not gonna care.
So with that in mind, the music is depressingly average for the idea. On paper, this should've been straight fuckin' wacky, but in reality it's just kind of meandering and all the best songs are the least weird ones. "Dawnslayer" and "Strange Aeons" are just straight ahead animu metal that would be right at home as stage music for BlazBlue, and those songs rule. "Dawnslayer" in particular rips the opening melody from Dragonforce's "Fury of the Storm" and it's so brazen and fun that I don't even care. Power metal is clearly the subgenre that the whole conceit of mixing metal with idol culture that fits the most naturally, so it's no surprise that those two songs stand out as among the most well written. The more overtly poppy tracks like "Kadath" and "Skulls in the Stars" are also a perfect fit, with the latter of which being literally the only time throughout all ten tracks that I can differentiate the different voices of the five different singers. Generally they just sound like one girl harmonizing with herself, so it's disappointing that they don't do more with the variety presented to them, but this seems to be a common trope in the genre so I'll just write it off as a cliche they're kinda bound to.
The problem arises with the weird songs themselves just being kinda bland. It's really obvious which songs Dan Terminus worked on, because "In Black" and "Innsmouth" throw the thumping synthwave influence to the forefront, but they wind up being the most boring tracks on the album because they're not even as extreme as his solo work. The Wrath of Code is total sensory overload, "Innsmouth" is just a dark, vaguely poppy song with heavy synths. "Samhain" takes a weirdly ska approach with the jaunty upstrokes taking the brunt of the song's impact. The only two songs that really take the idea of "avant-garde black metal J-girl idolpop" to its logical extreme are "Thanatogenesis" and "Psychopomp". The latter takes the creepy staccato vocals from "In Black" and puts them over churning mid-paced black metal riffs and then switches it for dark acoustic stuff every once and a while and just grinds on for way too long. "Thanatogenesis" on the other hand is everything I wanted this album to be. This is the one time they fully took advantage of the idea, because this is weird and chaotic with regards to the music itself. The riffs are nasty and venomous and the drumming is a cacophonous avalanche of blast beats and off-time jazzy fills, and it's all happening underneath these very soothing vocals that fly over the top, completely disconnected from what's going on with the music. This is fucking awesome. This discordant, Deathspell Omega style dissonant chaos laying the foundation for incongruently saccharine sweetness from an offputtingly innocent voice is exactly the kind of thing that VOIDHYMN needs more of. It sounds like a sweet apparition gently guiding you into a swirling maelstrom of hellfire and cosmic unspeakableness and I love it. If every song was as good as "Thanatogenesis" this would be an easy top five contender on the year, I'm dead serious.
But unfortunately, every song isn't as good. Most of the weird songs are just dull and unexciting while the more normal poppy and/or shreddy power metal songs are very solid. There's only one track that truly breaks the mold and that's basically the glorious fluke that should've been the basis for the entire album. Overall, I do like this, but I wish it was bolder in its experimentation, because there's a lot of potential left on the table here. This starts off promising and just gets less and less weird as it goes on, eventually ending on a few decent poppy J-rock tracks that all but leave the uncomfortable darkness behind. Maybe the lyrics keep things creepy and unsettling, but I have no way of knowing since the only Japanese I can speak is in the form of Gargoyle album titles.
And I need to reiterate how fucking awesome the cover art is. I want a giant flag with that art covering an entire wall in my bedroom.
RATING: 71%
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