The Necrophonic Orchestra

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Welcome! This site is designed to allow mobile device users easy access to Necrophonic Orchestra material, all on one convenient page. It contains abridged versions of the information found on the traditional necrophonic.net site, and allows access to media and downloads without all of the frames and tables that tend to play havoc on the smaller screens of smaller devices. For the full experience, it is recommended that you check out the traditional site from a computer-based web browser. All information here will be updated whenever the main site is updated, in order to keep everything current.

About The Necrophonic Orchestra

I'm Dominick Balsamo, and The Necrophonic Orchestra is my project. It is a genre-defying body of musical work that spans nearly twenty years of creative output. Over the years I have worked in numerous bands that you have never heard of. As a solo artist, I have recorded under various pseudonyms including Grind, The Omega Three Project, Captain Wacky's Funhouse of Doom, Entropy Five, Old Scratch and the The Necrophonic Orchestra, Gaki, and Black Saxon. Originally, whenever I would shift musical focus away from my previous projects, I would create a new persona and "band name" to record under. All of this was part of an ever-evolving story that I've been telling with my music. In time I began to feel that, while it was completely appropriate to portray different characters within the story of my work, using different names all the time was both confusing and unnecessary. As such, I've decided to do away with that practice and place all of my work under the banner of The Necrophonic Orchestra.
I am an independent musician who records and releases my own music under my own label and production group, and by my own means. I create music for the sake of doing it, and do not treat my work as commerce. As such, I give away most of my music for free. Some stuff I have to sell because I invested additional money into it beyond the normal production costs. Likewise, because merchandise costs money to produce, I have to charge for that as well. Everything that I do sell, however, is sold at cost. This means that I don't actually make any profit from any of my sales. All money goes to paying for the costs of creating the good, and that's it. Frankly, I believe that music being treated as commerce has killed the artistic value of modern music at large (with a few exceptions). As such, I am attempting to distance myself from treating my work that way. In the end, I'd like to be remembered as an artist, and not a media whore.

The Music

What follows is a list of the records that I have released. To download them, or to link to a page where they can be purchased, simply click the picture of the album cover.

Entropy Five: Bare Bones
(Recorded 1999-2001, Released 2001, Reissued 2005)

Bare Bones was my first long-play release. It is a concept album about The Corpse of Rock and Roll, a marionette-like being powered by drugs and corporate machinery. It tells the story of The Corpse's downward spiral into madness and death, only to face the reality of his wrongs and to be reborn into something new.
The music is a blend of rock and industrial. It was recorded on virtually no budget, forcing me to be highly creative in my production techniques. Was I ended up with was a warm and full, almost tape-like sound that I have never quite been able to recreate on my newer, more advanced and expensive recording equipment. The album was originally released in 2001, and then remastered and reissued in 2005.

Entropy Five: Biotech
(Recorded 2003-2005, Released 2005)

Biotech was my second long-play release. It is a purely electronic album about forgetting who you are in your effort to become something more than what you've been. It's retrospective of the emotions I was dealing with during the creation of Bare Bones, except looked at from an external perspective instead of an internal one.
I have always had mixed feelings about this record. Halfway through the recording process, my computer died. Because I did not back up the files for the first half of songs recorded for the album, all I had left were my rough mixes. Upon getting a new computer and doing a major overhaul of my recording gear, I completed the second half of the album and remastered the first set of tracks as best as I could. I didn't re-record the tracks because by the time I had got to that point, I was in a different headspace and wasn't really able to muster up the same emotions necessary to redo the original tracks and do them any kind of justice. What I ended up with was a product that is half lo-fi and half hi-fi, that can be a little jarring in its quality discrepancy between tracks. It's not absolute crap (I wouldn't have released it if it was), it's just a little inconsistent, though which half is the "better" half is totally dependent on the listener's tastes.

Gaki: Seppuku Party 1702
(Recorded 2005, Limited Release 2005-2006)

Seppuku Party 1702 was inspired by a bad experience that I had with a certain independent musician (who will remain nameless), who got a little too big for his britches and snubbed me when I was trying to help promote his work. This individual's whole schtick was that he made crappy music with insipid lyrics that was made funny because of his stage persona, a hardcore European guy. As a result of this snub, I decided that I would invent a "strange foreign persona" of my own, and make music that blew his out of the water. The catch was that I would never spend more than six hours on any given song. What resulted was Osaka, Japan's Tetsuo Yukikama and his powernoise project "Gaki."
This project was produced entirely in Garage Band, using very basic synth sounds and electronic drums with heavy effects processing. As noted, I never spent more than six hours on a single song. The vocals are comprised entirely of growls (also heavily processed), with impromptu engrish lyrics about torture, hermaphrodites, vampires and hallucinogen use.

Old Scratch and the Necrophonic Orchestra: Spookshow
(Recorded 2005-2006, Released 2006)

Spookshow started out as an experiment in horrorcore hip-hop and comedy, and grew into one of my most popular projects to date. It is yet another concept album, telling the story of a would-be rap star who sells his soul to the devil in order to become a famous performer. However, once he "makes it," he realizes that the world that he sold his soul to get into was nothing but a fake, destructive, sucking vortex of soulless greed. In the end, he walks away from the world, choosing to blaze his own trail and reclaim his own soul. Though the subject is dark, the whole story is told with sardonic humor that opts to make fun of the subject instead of whine about it.
The music for this project is firmly rooted in hip-hop, with synth and industrial elements added to give it a darker feel. Musically, it is akin to a horror movie soundtrack, with a backbeat added. The whole album is loaded with dark humor, samples from classic (and not-so-classic) horror flicks, and some of my most creative wordplay. Upon completing this album, I was so proud of my work that I decided to have a thousand CDs professionally pressed. As such, it is currently not available for free. All CDs are sold at cost, however, so they're really not that expensive. It is also available on iTunes, if you really don't want to deal with hard media.

Black Saxon: The Hallowed Path to Oblivion
(Recorded & Released 2009)

Black Saxon was a project that I put together purely for fun and personal amusement. It tells the story of Woden (pronounced Voh-Den), a thousand-year-old Saxon warlord turned immortal vampire, who - along with his bandmates Abaddon, Miss Grimm, and Brute - is on a quest to destroy modern society and bring about a new Dark Age of nihilistic lawlessness where only the strong survive. He does this, as all good corruptors and destroyers do, through unmitigated violence, antisocial behavior, and heavy metal.
The music is a blend of death and groove metal, with no small amount of punk influence, and is considerably (and intentionally) simplistic compared to my other output. The focus of the music is entirely on rhythm and sonic brutality. The vocals are delivered exclusively through growls. The lyrics are all about (what else?) rebellion, violence, and death. Nothing about this recording is to be taken seriously. I mean, it's vampire metal for fuck's sake. This first recording was designed to be a "demo" for Black Saxon, and a starting point for a future project. The nature of that project has yet to be determined, though I have a few ideas in mind as to where I can take it.

More Coming Soon! More music will be available soon. I'm digging deep back into the vaults and unearthing some pre-Entropy-Five material, as well as some previously-unreleased tracks from Old Scratch. All of that will be made available here, for free download. I'm also working on Caine Radio, an original soundtrack for an upcoming web series entitled "Sigh Morosely," which is being written, produced and directed by my good friend and DKC-brethren David Alan Bennett. Keep an eye out for new stuff. It's on the way!

External Links

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Contact Information

Contact the Artist: dominick@necrophonic.net

Booking Information/Offers: booking@necrophonic.net

Project Information/Offers:project@necrophonic.net

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