Draculea

Oh no…this is not possible. When everything seemed to go better for Necrodeath with 100% Heel, after the shabby Ton(e)s Of hate, here we go again with another quite weak album. The main, worst, point of this albums is the sense of boredom it succeeds in giving to the listener. Well, it’s impossible to have back the 80s Necrodeath but I would be happy to have back to “Mater Of All Evil” Necrodeath instead of this album, that is just another nail in the coffin for a band that seems almost completely lost and with no ideas after the violent “Black As Pitch”.

100% was enjoyable and even now, when the band decides to hit hard is quite good but the burden of darkness and evil is almost gone away. The sound is always very good, powerful and too clear in my opinion and maybe that’s why they lost a lot in evilness. The intro and the outro are words in Rumanian, maybe narrating the Dracula’s life, being this album a concept on him. The following, “Smell Of Blood” is quite good for the speed but there’s nothing new even if it achieved the goal of creating some headbang.

“Party In Tirgouiste” features an arpeggio directly taken from “Black Soul” song on Mater Of All Evil. That’s not good for the originality…the rest of the song wants to be as evil as possible, but apart from the good, evocative and recycled arpeggio, there are few things to notice. Flegias’ vocals are always very good, even if I’ll always prefer the Ingo’s ones but maybe here the new singer is better for the Necrodeath’s musical direction after the reunion.

The self cover (or better, the revisited) “Fragments Of Insanity” is good during the more mid paced parts where the band is always good in creating gloom and ritualistic atmosphere. Here the differences with the past are becoming stronger and you can hear them very well, being a song from 1988. What doesn’t convince me are the up tempo parts and the Peso way of playing the drums. The reviews in Italy were enthusiastic for the technique level the drummer reached and even if he has improved a lot from the early days, he lost the classic thrash/black rawness, without mentioning his new drum kit: just two crashes, a snare, double kick and a simple tom-bongo…the rolls on that bongo are horrible both to see and hear…

“Draculea” is totally boring, arduous to appreciate. It’s a sort of a long instrumental with played vocals, solos and some atmospheres. “Countess Bathory” is good but it’s another filler here. “Golden Cup” is slow, ritualistic and boring. What shocked me here is the Necrodeath’s will to be as evil as they can through mid paced, doom songs with atmosphere! What a waste of time! The fast “Impaler Prince” is wake up call before falling again for a snap with the outro.

Ok, now let’s analyze one thing. If we clean this album up from the fillers (the intro and the outro, the two covers, the title track and “The Golden Cup”) we have more or less 16 minutes of quite good music out of 47. Now, it’s your choice. I’m sorry, but I cannot give to this album a sufficient mark. Let’s hope for the future but my personal opinion is that now Necrodeath should concentrate on the live gigs instead of recording new albums and so, maybe, the remembrance of the glory days won’t be destroyed.