NEW NOISE
NECKBREAKKER
The upstarts supporting Slayer and putting Danish death metal on the map
WORDS: MATT MILLS
Neckbreakker: coming for your neckks this summer
PRESS/MALENE VINGE JAKOBSEN
WHEN JOAKIM HØHOLT Kaspersen co-founded Neckbreakker in 2020, aged 15, one of his dreams was to play Copenhell, his home country’s premier metal festival.
“As a Danish band, that is the thing that you strive towards,” the guitarist says of the 35,000-capacity weekender. He was just 19 when that dream came true.
“We’d all been going to that festival for years before we played it,” he continues with a smile. “It’s a place where the entire metal scene unites every year, so it was like playing a festival where half of the crowd are your friends.”
Performing at one of Scandinavia’s biggest festivals is just the first item on the list of colossal things these death metal upstarts have accomplished. Now aged between 18 and 22, they’ve already signed to Nuclear Blast and released their propulsive debut album, Within The Viscera, in December. In a ‘full circle’ moment, they’ve been announced as the opening act for Slayer’s two UK mega-gigs this July – a fitting opportunity, considering the thrash legends were Joakim’s gateway into extreme metal.