Everyone knows the joke bands such as Psychostick (personal favorite of this sexy author), but what about the bands who form themselves around the joke, becoming the thing they are lampooning? Then one becomes Meta, reaching so many levels they can rent rooms for a highrise. One such band is the relatively new Nekrogoblikon, with their newest, Heavy Meta.

Heavy Meta Track List:
The End of Infinity
We’ve Had Enough
Bring Us More
Snax & Violence
Atlantis
We Need a Gimmick
Full Body Xplosion
Let’s Get Fucked (w/ Andrew W.K.)
Mood Swing
Nekrogoblikon

Nekrogoblikon has been running around, touching all the shit shit since 2006, and the gimmick has never been stronger with a band. Featuring a non-musical member, a goblin of course, known as John Goblikon. They are known for their humor running wild, musically and visually, as they have John as their mascot, technical advisor, and Idea man. They are technically extremely proficient as a band, playing styles from melodic metal, to power metal, to progressive metal. VOcals range from a pleasant singing voice, to a goblinesque croak, to a death metal growl. They can shred with the best, and joke with the rest!

Heavy Meta finds them in similar straights, as they struggle to support the weight of their own jokes, as they seek that magic Gimmick that will immortalize them forever. The jokes are all in the lyrics and content, like We Need a Gimmick, as they explore pop culture faads and current trends (EMB and #bacon, for starters) looking for that magic view count. The meta content is staggering as they expound verse by verse, laying down a minotaur’s lair of limericks and licks. There progressive metal bent is heavily on display, as they simply kill on the musical side.

Tracks like … Gimmick, The End of Infinity, Bring Us More, and Full Body Explosion all showcase amazing production, skillful playing, arrangements that make Orchestras weep, and a mastery of many genres that rival the likes of Between the Buried and Me and Protest the Hero. They shift from zany, pell-mell sprints down funhouse hallways to almost operatic vistas, then on to the weird lands of Andrew W.K. (Let’s Get Fucked) almost perfectly, while maintaining this air of fun and never losing the high energy at any point. Honestly, except for listening to the lyrics, they musically are right there with the proficiency of BTBAM and PTH, both of whom are no slouches, and continually evolve their sound with more and more esoteric pieces of source material. The joke has become so much larger than I would have called need for.

As the album cover shows, they have become crushed under their own premise, Goblin Metal, and the burden has indeed called for extreme measures! Let us see where they choose to take us out of left field entirely, or if they decide to bunt.

If you want to see what these guys present, visually, here are some OFFICIAl videos:

We Need A Gimmick

Powercore

No One Survives

(Due to my extreme love for these guys, please buy more stuff, so I can feed my Nekrogoblikon addiction! Heavy Meta album out now, iTunes, Amazon, Facebook, their YouTube and this thing)