Review of Necessary Evil - Curse

 There are probably people who hear the words “techno metal” and immediately start looking for the nearest exit.

Fair enough. Metal has already survived nu-metal, crabcore, djent, electronicore and approximately 47 bands who decided that putting a dubstep breakdown between two mediocre riffs was going to change the fucking world. So when Necessary Evil describe Curse as a “new word in metal dance music”, the natural reaction is probably to reach for a beer and prepare for the worst.

Except… this isn't nearly as stupid as it sounds.

Necessary Evil come from the UK/USA and were previously operating as Violet Sky, and Curse is a five-track EP built around the collision of metal, electronic music, industrial textures and a very obvious love of anime, horror and cyberpunk aesthetics. And yes, there are plenty of moments where you can practically see the neon lights flashing behind the speakers.

But that's actually part of the charm.

“Death in Tokyo” opens the EP with exactly the kind of manic electronic-metal collision you'd expect from a project that apparently refuses to choose between a mosh pit and a dark nightclub. The rhythm is heavily driven by the electronic side of the arrangement, while the heavier elements give it enough bite to stop it becoming generic dance-floor material.

The lyrics are equally unhinged.

Robots, corpses, Tokyo, hysteria, salvation, madness, people becoming soulless dolls — and then suddenly you're being told to go outside and enjoy the apocalypse. Subtlety has clearly been placed on the same train as good taste and sent to another station.

And honestly, good.

Necessary Evil aren't trying to write poetry for people who sit around discussing metaphorical ambiguity over expensive coffee. This is theatrical, exaggerated and deliberately cartoonish, but underneath the ridiculousness there's a consistent obsession with technological alienation and humanity turning itself into something mechanical.

Then comes “Yandere”, and this is where the anime influence stops being something you read about in the biography and walks directly into the room wearing a knife.

For anyone unfamiliar with the term, a yandere character is essentially the sweet-looking obsessive-love nightmare who would happily murder half the population because you looked at somebody else for three seconds. So naturally Necessary Evil turn that idea into a catchy metal/electronic love song about chains, murder, obsession and eternal hostage situations.

Romantic stuff.

Musically, it's one of the EP's more immediate pieces. The hook is simple and repetitive in exactly the way this material needs to be. There's something almost perversely cheerful about singing along to “my lovely Yandere” while the subject matter is basically psychological imprisonment.

This is where Curse starts making more sense.

The band aren't really trying to make metal that happens to contain electronics. They're treating electronic music as one of the actual foundations of the songs. The pulse, repetition and synthetic textures are just as important as the guitars.

That makes the whole “metal dance music” description less ridiculous than it initially sounds.

“Spirit of the H-Castle” takes the project into more overt horror territory. The song comes with a full supernatural narrative about a castle massacre, ghosts, curses, ritual, decapitation and souls that apparently have absolutely no interest in leaving quietly.

Again, this is not a band worried about understatement.

The spoken passages help sell the whole thing, giving it the atmosphere of some bizarre lost soundtrack to a Japanese horror game that was never actually released. The lyrics read almost like a miniature horror story, and that theatrical approach is one of Necessary Evil's stronger characteristics.

It also helps that the music doesn't simply sit underneath the story like background wallpaper. The electronic production creates a synthetic, slightly unreal atmosphere that fits the subject matter surprisingly well.

Then there's the title track, “Curse”, which changes the mood considerably.

This is probably the point where the EP reveals that underneath all the dolls, demons, anime references and electronic madness, there is something considerably more personal going on.

The song is about being treated as a burden, living according to somebody else's expectations and eventually deciding that enough is enough. “I’m a slave of your ambitions” is a pretty direct statement, and the chorus turns that frustration into a much more conventional emotional hook.

It also gives the EP some breathing room.

Because without a track like this, Curse could easily become five songs of neon horror cosplay. Instead, there is a human frustration sitting underneath the fantasy imagery. The idea of being somebody else's “broken toy” fits surprisingly well with the project's recurring obsession with dolls, robots, idols and artificial identities.

And then we finish with “Idol”, which brings those ideas right back into the band's theatrical universe.

The “fallen idol” isn't exactly a wholesome relationship counsellor. She's a fantasy becoming real, a voice becoming hypnotic, an artwork becoming something dangerous. The song plays with the relationship between performer and audience, fantasy and reality, admiration and obsession.

Which makes it a pretty fitting closer.

There is definitely a visual component to Necessary Evil's music. You don't just hear these songs; the whole thing seems designed to exist alongside images, characters, anime scenes, horror imagery and neon-lit cyberpunk nonsense. Whether that will work for everyone is another question.

If you're looking for raw death metal, don't bother.

If you're looking for traditional heavy metal, definitely don't bother.

And if the words “EDM metal” already make you angry, perhaps just leave the room now and we'll meet again when the next Venom reissue comes out.

But if you're willing to accept that heavy music can occasionally be ridiculous, theatrical and danceable without automatically becoming shit, Curse has something going for it.

The biggest problem is also the band's biggest strength: they really like the aesthetic.

Sometimes the electronics and theatrical elements threaten to become more important than the actual songwriting. There are moments when you can feel the production doing a lot of the heavy lifting, and the material doesn't always hit with the same force when stripped down to its basic components. The whole thing is also so committed to its particular universe that anyone outside that universe might find it difficult to connect with.

But that's not necessarily a flaw.

Necessary Evil clearly aren't interested in sanding the weirdness down until everybody can comfortably digest it.

And thank fuck for that.

The underground has enough bands trying desperately to sound like the last band that got signed. Curse at least sounds like a project with its own strange little corner of the internet already mapped out: industrial metal, electronic beats, anime nightmares, horror stories, obsessive lovers, robots, corpses, fallen idols and enough synthetic atmosphere to power a small shopping centre in Tokyo.

Is it a “new word in metal dance music”?

Let's not start engraving that sentence on a monument just yet.

But is it an interesting fucking mixture?

Yeah.

And sometimes that's enough.

https://necessaryevil.lovable.app/