BAND OF THE WEEK: NECRØ
BAND OF THE WEEK: NECRØ
Beats that kill. (includes exclusive interview!)
For followers of the Portuguese underground, NECRØ was pretty much a no-brainer to follow closely once the project was revealed, as it is composed by two musicians with a great background over here already. João Vairinhos first gained recognition as a drummer, starting out really young with, among others, local hardcore legends Day Of The Dead before founding the mighty LÖBO, a crushing instrumental post-metal/industrial/atmospheric band that unfortunately only gave us one album/EP (it’s 35 minutes long, you decide) in 2010 - ‘ÄLMA’, go check it out - and still haunt me and many others as one of the biggest what-might-have-been propositions in the land. He’s since switched to a more knob-twiddling role, and his electronic work is worthy of note too - his 2020 EP ‘Vénia’ is a fantastic, foreboding piece of drone/dark ambient that you should never ever listen to in a dark room all by yourself. Sara Inglês, on the other hand, is one of the driving forces behind the classy Wildnorthe, who deftly explore synth/darkwave textures with a post-punk vibe, and whose full-length debut ‘Murmur’ you should also totally check out. At one point, Wildnorthe expanded from a duo to a trio, with the addition of a certain… João Vairinhos, so there we go, we have arrived in a nice roundabout way at NECRØ. If you need more details about their origin story, we do have a full interview beneath this, so worry not. But for now, jams.
That’s the title-track of NECRØ’s debut EP, ‘Death Beats’, and the last song on that release too, and it serves as a great presentation to what they’re all about. The trademarks of both musicians involved are pretty much all there - dynamic, driving beats, ethereal vocals, a sinister, sometimes even menacing tone to it all. It’s all a bit creepy, and not in a safe, halloweeny kind of way. The darkness is real, but at the same time it’s still approachable enough to keep it on the dancefloors instead of definitely being banished to the dungeons. It’s a tough balance to juggle - you become too happy, and the death-seekers all leave; you go too far into the harshness and no one will want to dance to it. But it’s an equilibrium well achieved throughout these six songs, which feel varied but still like they belong together. I’m really looking forward to see what the duo will come up with next, and maybe lift the one-album curse that’s plagued a few of their past endeavours.
You can find NECRØ on Bandcamp, Facebook, Instagram and Spotify. Click on the player right here to listen to ‘Death Beats’ right now, and then stick around for the chat we had with them right below.
We both like music too much to get stuck to any particular genre, but darker sounds, heavy atmospheres, electronic beats and synths will always be a part of NECRØ
- João Vairinhos
What are the origins of NECRØ?
João: NECRØ appears after the remixes I made for two FØREST FIRES songs. When I finished ‘Vénia’, I thought I needed to explore other approaches, as I was focused on those three songs for a long time. When I started doing those remixes, I had just started to play with Wildnorthe as a live drummer, so the idea to try something with a a more present, repetitive beat came up naturally. After the remixes were released, I had the idea of making a record based on overlapping the atmosphere and the energy of ‘Vénia’ with a more repetitive electronic beat and gothic-like synths. In the meantime the pandemic happened, and during the mandatory lockdowns I really dove into that… it worked as a conscious alienation to what was going on during that time.
It’s a little early to predict this, of course, but is it at least your intention to proceed working with this project, or at least to not do an EP or two and disappear forever?
João: If you think about it, disappearing into the shadows isn’t necessarily a bad thing, if the projects can leave something here for someone to listen to. While there is music to listen to, what we lasts forever. Regardless of this hermit side being something that really appeals to me when I make music in my own, with NECRØ we do want to work on and make new music available regularly. In that aspect, doing it with Sara helps me to not want to be such a hermit.
When did it become more clear that your collaboration would produce music like this, was it natural from the start? In my head, one of you just said “death beats” and everything flowed from there. [laughs]
João: This collaboration didn’t begin with a blank page, since I already had the majority of the songs ready, and vocals were the last part to be included. When Sara accepted my invitation, the conclusion of the songs became a job for two, since adding vocals to my instrumentals required revisions and adaptations. Initially, the record was actually called ‘Surviving Pessimism’ and we only changed it afterwards to ‘Death Beats’, so the environment I tried to create was something along that idea of trying to survive the day-to-day pessimism… looking for the golden moments that escape us, or that are taken from us.
Sara: In all the projects I’ve been involved with, my influences and style always arose naturally, but it’s been with NECRØ that I have felt the most at east to explore places I had never been to with my voice. The writing is entirely Vairinhos, so I like to shake the system and create a certain amount of chaos that can help take the songs to an even more extreme place.
What is usually the beginning of a song for you? Can it be a beat, a texture, a word even?
João: Some songs did start with a beat (‘Narcissist’, for instance), others with synths (‘Surviving Pessimism’ and ‘Death Beats’) and they evolved from there. In some cases we already have chosen titles, and the choice of melodies and sounds we used were based on the idea behind each title. The videos and the graphic components were only made after we had the songs fully ready.
Sara: What started only as an invitation to sing in one song, after the first experiments I sent him, totally transformed. All of a sudden I found myself being part of the whole project. From there, to actually feeling a bigger involvement and building and imagining imagery, artwork, a video and whole visual universe alongside Vairinhos, it was a small step, and it led us to where we are now.
Might you look at the EP as a starting point to a bigger exploration, or more like a certain definition of what this collaboration can offer? Do you admit, for example, adding more people to the line-up, doing something substantially different soundwise, or any other “drastic” measures like that if you feel like it?
João: Something that I’ve learned along the way with the several projects I’ve participated in, is that there’s no use in closing yourself to possibility. For the meantime, however, NECRØ only makes sense with me and Sara. While that is, we’ll keep focusing on giving our personal touch to those styles usually called darkwave, synthwave or EBM. We both like music too much to get stuck to any particular genre, but I would say that darker sounds, heavy atmospheres, electronic beats and synths will always be a part of NECRØ. We don’t intend to stagnate, and certainly our music will evolve to different places, but we have a pretty clear idea of the image and sound we want for NECRØ.
Unfortunately, no one will find pretty stories or advice for happy living in NECRØ
- Sara Inglês
Tell us about the lyrics. What the hell is going on here? [smiles]
Sara: The process of writing lyrics was very fluid. Each of us had developed ideas, and in a few cases we ended up joining concepts without ever trying to influence or change the meaning of the emotions or words. NECRØ’s lyrics are a reflex of each of us, of what we see around us. Unfortunately, no one will find pretty stories or advice for happy living in NECRØ, what you will find is a confrontation with our shadows, and a certain fatalism is always present, a tendency for the abyss that excites, consumes and unsettles.
Playing live would be awesome. Do you have plans?
João: There are plans to play live, yes. We are already working on transposing the EP to a live format and we’re also finishing up some new songs. We’ve had interesting feedback both in Portugal and abroad, so that’s something we are planning to start doing soon.
Sara: Playing live is something that was only discussed at a very late stage of the recording of the EP, though. The main goal wasn’t to play the songs live - but when we started to see NECRØ take shape, we also realised that leaving the songs in an ethereal plane would be an error. Right now we’re at a place where both of us want to hear these songs, and we’re excited about building a live set.
What have you been doing besides NECRØ? João, is ‘Vénia’ going to have a follow-up? Does the heart of LÖBO still beat? And hey, when is there going to be a Day Of The Dead reunion?! [laughs] Sara, is the Wildnorthe silence something to worry about?
João: Lately I’ve been prioritising NECRØ and all the aspects regarding the production of ‘Death Beats’, but there’s more things happening at the same time. I’ve been doing a collaboration with Pedro Geraldes, and the heart of LÖBO never stopped beating, but it has its own rhythm and rarely leaves the shadows. And I know you are dying to do a stagedive at a Day Of The Dead show, but I don’t think that’s going to happen!
Sara: My most recent collaboration was with FØREST FIRES on the EP ‘The Fire, The Light, The Sun’, and after that NECRØ has been my focus. Wildnorthe are currently in a pause, silence is necessary for the natural rhythms of life and we are not afraid to listen to it.