Into the Macabre

Okay, taking a simple look at the cover art of this album and you will most likely tell yourself that it's ugly as hell. Well, you're right, I wouldn't want a patch of this album cover on my battle vest, that's for sure. Alright, despite the ugliness of the front art, what about the music featured inside the album itself? Ah, this is a whole other story, to be quite honest. I didn't expect the music to have such a huge impact at first listen. We have to remember that Necrodeath is from Italy, a country that wasn't known to bring extreme metal music, especially back in the 80s. For people that know some bands from Italy in that particular time will probably cite acts like Bulldozer or Schizo, but due to the shitload of bands from the rest of Europe, these guys were far from the center of people's attention.

Released in 1987, "Into the Macabre" is the first full-length album of Necrodeath, following their 1985 "The Shining Pentagram" demo. The music we can find on this record is pure evil, I mean, the atmosphere is outstanding, it's probably one of the best examples of 80s black metal (No, it's not the same thing as modern black metal you know today). The best way I can compare the content of this album with is basically Kreator with an evil feeling on it. This is not just straightforward thrash metal, the sound is way more heavier and brutal than most of the other similar bands of that time. However, it's quite obvious that they took their influences from the German band, even the singer has a similar voice tone and vocal style as Mille of Kreator (which isn't a bad thing if you ask me anyway).

This album is quite short, unfortunately, with a running time of only 33 minutes. Featuring eight songs averaging the 3-4 minutes of length, I can tell from experience that when playing this album, it doesn't take long to realize that it's already over ... The album kicks-off with the track "...Agony / The Flag of the Inverted Cross", and I may say in a weird fashion. The first ten seconds made me think about a cute sound that is played by a child musical box. Though, soon after, a devastating intro riff kicks in and the drumming blast follows quickly after, just this song is more than enough to convince that these guys are crazy and aggressive as hell. The guitar riffs aren't that unique or innovative, but fit perfectly with the violent vibe heard there. At some degrees, there are tracks that stand out more for their memorable passages, such as "Internal Decay", in which the chorus offers an oustanding incantation feeling. There we also have the most popular Necrodeath song, called "Mater Tenebrarum", this is probably the most interesting track on the atmosphere side, just by the sublime introduction and evil growling chorus. The most "thrashy" song is certainly "Necrosadist", with its classic song structure that we often see in the thrash metal world, even with catchiness. The track "At the Mountains of Madness" shows how creative Necrodeath were at the time, the songwriting is brillant and they knew how to balance the infernal speed and put some melodic passages in it too. The album ends with "The Undead / Agony (Reprise)", which is like the second part of the first song I guess, the funny part of it is that it ends exactly the same way as it began on the first track, with the cute music.

In general, this record delivers very well in terms of brutality, the tracks all possess at least a killer riff that stands out from the others. The production work is also pretty good. I have no issues at all with this whole record quality, it sounds exactly or even better than a typical 80s extreme metal album should sound like. The instrumental work is really cool, but not that impressive on the technical side obviously (solos and stuff), the drums are totally insane though, but like I said before, the unique atmosphere and evil vibe is the highlight of this whole album. Lyrics-wise, it's pretty easy to tell that their concept is based on the occult and satanic stuff, like a lot of other bands did at that time as well.

So, do I recommend this album? Absolutely! Fans of German thrash or people that are in quest of some underground old school 80s evil and brutal thrash metal will be very pleased by this record. Even with its short length, it's way more than enough to bang your head pretty hard on this one. This is a true classic of the genre and totally deserves its cult status, probably the best 80s metal release from Italy from my point of view.