Romulus

Formed in 2008, Ex Deo is officially a side project of Kataklysm frontman Maurizio Iacono, who seemed to want to reconnect with his homeland’s glorious past. However, a glancing inspection at the band’s line-up confirms that Ex Deo is, in fact, Kataklysm under a new name since all current band members are in both bands. Ex Deo’s first album is titled Romulus after the legendary founder of the city of Rome in the eighth century BC, and consists of death metal with a modern edge, similar to Kataklysm’s last two albums’ sound but different in atmosphere due to its particular lyrical subject and keyboard usage. To those who haven’t grasped the massive amount of signs leading to this, Romulus is a concept album dealing with the Roman world in all its aspects and is, overall, a rather good release.

The album kicks in with its first single, the title track, a complex piece which relies heavily on the use of keyboards for create its special atmosphere. It’s death metal, but heavily reliant on elements unorthodox to the genre, most notably the aforementioned keyboards and a high amount of pace variation: the songs alternate often between mid-paced, slow and extremely fast sections. Sometimes this approach works to make the album’s atmosphere epic and perfect; sometimes it just gets tedious and annoying. Thus the main feature of Romulus, its strange overall structure, is what makes it both interesting to own and listen to yet at the same time is its Achilles’ heel. The opening title track is fortunately one of the successful songs, being generally slow-paced with a slightly faster section during the chorus. As mentioned before, it deals with the founding of Rome by the legendary twins, Romulus and Remus, and of the latter’s slaying at the hands of his brother in 753 BC. The second song, Storm the Gates of Alesia, is an all-out war song, fast-paced and insanely epic, reminiscent of Amon Amarth’s attempts at such songs but with the unmistakable Kataklysm twist to it. And reminiscent of a war song it should be, because it deals with one of the most important battles of Antiquity, that of Alesia, where in 52 BC Julius Caesar sealed Gaul’s fate as a Roman province for the following five centuries. Massive thundering riffs and mid-paced blast beat-ridden drumming make the perfect soundtrack for a song commemorating this event.

The album is from then on composed of songs which take the same usual elements of death metal, adding the same keyboards from atmosphere with some clean spoken passages on occasion. Cry Havoc is particularly a highlight in this regard, having a huge spoken part in the middle which is done perfectly, sounding like the portion of a theatrical play and actually making it epic and being the peak moment in the mostly slow-paced song. In Her Dark Embrace is another highlight, being another very aggressive and monumental track which particularly demonstrates Max Duhamel’s excellent drumming skills as well as Maurizio Iacono’s great voice and range. His growls are pretty consistent throughout the whole album and are the main reminder that this band is, in fact, Kataklysm with another name. The final and most amazing song here is undoubtedly Legio XIII, I.E. The Thirteenth Legion, the one with which Caesar crossed the Rubicon in 49 BC, precipitating the civil war from which he emerged as Rome’s Dictator for life. What makes it so great is that it’s another war-related track, standing perfectly as one of those “before the storm/armies gathering” tracks, comparable in this regard to Amon Amarth’s Tattered Banners and Bloody Flags both in theme and structure. The right kind of drumming is essential here, as it’s used, along with the keyboards, to create the perfect battle atmosphere. The guitar work is overall excellent, contributing much to the whole Roman and warlike ambience from beginning to end, and there’s even a great, unmistakable death metal-like solo in the middle of Cruor Nostri Abbas.

Most other songs are good, if unremarkable in some cases, except for Invictus which is plain boring due to it being a slow-paced track which just plods around aimlessly for almost seven minutes. This general trend of unremarkable material is especially true around the end of the album, centered on the almost as useless (but still slightly more interesting) Surrender the Sun. The album’s overall concept is probably the thing which goes furthest in making it desirable, since it’s varied and centered on the First Century BC (the era of the civil wars), with, among the subjects mentioned above, The Final War (Battle Of Actium) dealing with Octavian’s victory over Marc-Antony at Actium in 31 BC and aspects of Rome’s pagan religion, as is visible from the (very brief) lyrics and titles of tracks such as the album’s ending, The Pantheon (Jupiter's Reign). The subject is generally treated in an intelligent and well-written way, unlike other bands that can’t seem to deal with concepts competently or maturely. They even took samples from HBO’s epic but unfortunately rather short-lived TV series, Rome, such as Marc-Antony’s line at the beginning of Legio XIII.

The feeling the album leaves after a spin is basically one of inconsistence even if it generally is of decent quality. There are definite and incredibly good highlights, and unremarkable middle ground and a few extremely boring moments. This is basically a good reflection of Kataklysm’s career, which contains both excellent music and some lame crap. That said, Romulus is a good effort and is definitely worth obtaining for its interesting and unique place in today’s metal world, especially for those who, like me, have an interest in Roman history.