LIK – the modern day purveyors of classic Swedish death metal – gloriously return to action with their fourth album ‘Necro’ via Metal Blade on April 18th, 2025!

Standing loud and proud over so many imitators, ‘Necro’ is the musical equivalent of a classic shock-horror movie that’s drenched in blood and gore and packed with over-the-top extremities.

Delve beyond the zombie-fied cover art created by Stockholm-based tattooist and artist Jens Olsson (Ink Fanatics), ‘Necro’ serves as a reminder of just how special and exciting the genre is: packed with blood-curdling fantasy stories about war, death, zombies, world apocalypse, murder; and stacked with disgustingly-good rotten riffs.

LIK are proudly staying true to the DNA and ethos of the music they’ve collectively loved since their teenage years – cutting straight to the jugular in true quintessential death metal style.

After recording and releasing their critically acclaimed third full-length, 2020’s ‘Misanthropic Breed’ during the pandemic, this time around getting back into the studio properly was paramount. And while ‘Misanthropic Breed’ was recorded at the quartet’s rehearsal space where the band produce all their demos, when it came to recording ‘Necro’, LIK upped sticks to record at NBS Studio (a.k.a. Necromorbus Studio) in Söderfors, two hours from their home city.

Once again using uber-producer Lawrence Mackrory (Meshuggah, Katatonia, High Parasite, Decapitated), all the music was recorded live over a three-day period, before Tomas headed to Uppsala to record his vocals at Lawrence’s Rorysound Studios. Mackrory has worked with LIK – whose name translates to ‘corpse’ in Swedish – since their 2015 debut ‘Mass Funeral Evocation’ and throughout their Metal Blade Records’ career that started with 2018’s ‘Carnage’.

Track List:

Deceased 4:21
War Praise 3:40
They 4:02
Worms Inside 3:08
Morgue Rat 4:58
Shred into Pieces 2:18
In Ruins 4:40
The Stockholm Massacre 2:42
Fields of Death 4:02
Rotten Inferno 5:41

Within ‘Necro’s 10-tracks, LIK – completed by Niklas “Nille” Sandin (guitar), Chris Barkensjö (drums), and Joakim Antman (bass) – have created a seamless album, diverse in tempo but without losing any of their blood-soaked intensity and relentless in-your-face-attitude listeners have come to expect.

There are twists and turns that keep LIK on a progressive path without straying from their old school trademark sounds inspired by the godfathers Dismember, At The Gates and, of course, Entombed.

“We didn’t really want to repeat ourselves, but of course we wanted the LIK sound,” explains Tomas on the writing trajectory of ‘Necro’. “We wrote the song ‘War Praise’ first and that was the song we had to write; the one song that was just like what we have done before just to see if we could do something that piqued our interest in the sense of being a bit different but still very much LIK, and then we could go on writing.”

Dissecting ‘Necro’, it’s evident that the quartet have produced some of the best work of their decade-plus long career.

‘Deceased’ – the album’s blistering opener – is, says Tomas, a direct homage to Entombed. “That song turned into like an old Entombed song that we’ve been trying to write for years and now it’s happened,” he laughs.

‘They’ tells the story of creatures living underneath the city, tormenting and killing humans; think Brian Keene’s novel Urban Gothic.

Elsewhere, ‘Worms Inside’ was inspired by a nightmare Tomas had about his girlfriend being eaten from within by parasitic worms. Easily the album’s “fastest and most brutal” song, according to the singer, listen carefully and you’ll hear a nod to Metallica’s ‘Orion’ in its middle section.

The crushing ‘Morgue Rat’, a song partly inspired by infamous Californian necrophiliac Karen Greenlee, features the demonic vocal talents of Linnea Landstedt (Tyranex / Ice Age), while the bludgeoning ‘In Ruins’ features the unmistakable tones of gothic metal legend Nick Holmes (Paradise Lost / Bloodbath).

With ‘The Stockholm Massacre’ LIK delves into their country’s violent history books; while ‘Fields of Death’ addresses the horrors of war through the eyes of a crazed soldier who goes on a rampage before dying himself.

‘Necro’ ends with the staggeringly epic, ugly and almost Autopsy-esque ‘Rotten Inferno’. One of the album’s slowest and most sorrowful moments telling the story of a murderer who uses his victims for sexual pleasure, it incorporates a spoken-word monologue from Swedish actor Daniel Sjöberg. A friend of Tomas’, he’s known for work that includes 2020’s The Postcard Killings (which stars The Walking Dead’s Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and 1997’s Beck (featuring Game of Thrones’ Kristofer Hivju).

Continuing to fly the Swedish death metal flag across the global stage, ‘Necro’ is born out of pure love and respect for the genre and its creators’ artistic visions to keep pushing their own musical boundaries.

“The ambition with ‘Necro’ was to make an even better record than the previous albums,” says Tomas. “I think this one is really tied together. As it started growing and the songs got put together we were 100% focused on making that LIK album. I really think we made a really good death metal album, we found the right ingredients to make this one work.”

line-up:

Tomas Åkvik: Vocals / Guitar
Niklas “Nille” Sandin: Guitar
Chris Barkensjö: Drums
Joakim Antman: Bass

Active Since: 2014
Country: Sweden