Draculea

Just when I was trying to figure how a potential daughter of our beloved Dracula could be named, and boom… came the album reviewed here. Thanks a lot, Genova denizens! You helped me solve this conundrum with the title, but couldn’t quite make me feel that I was experiencing 100% hell on the music front, something that has been befalling me from your camp pretty much since you’ve started this (ghost) ride nearly quarter of a century ago…

nope, this isn’t a “once upon a flop” situation. “Ton(e)s of Hate”, the 2003 instalment, wasn’t one, either, regardless of how hard some folks out there try to convince you of the opposite. Marco Peso, the band founder, the drummer, and the only constant member, always manages to steer his ship away from the disastrous shores… and fair play to that. It’s just that sometimes he gets tempted by less extreme musical currents, and this is when the social consciousness rises to compel him to do a perfunctory reality check.

After the singeing old school thrashing ball of fury that was the preceding instalment, the band diversify their palette once again, but without tones of hate this time, mind you; the more lyrical stance instantly introduced with the all-instrumental lead-driven balladism “V.T.1431”, the closure “V.T.1476” mirroring the latter in both a musical and lyrical aspect, as this is going to be a saga circling around Vlad Tepes, the fearsome Romanian warlord from the 15th century who later became the first universally recognized vampire in history, also retaining his alias Dracula for all eternity.

Between these two poignant romanticisms, we have a varied spread-out which by all means has its less bridled vigorous side (“Smell of Blood”, certainly “Fragments of Insanity”), but their warding-off of the sideshow is by no means guaranteed, with atmospheric quasi-doomisms (“The Golden Cup”) and controversial power metal sleepers (the title-track) rushing to disperse the vintage Necrodeath delivery, the Venom cover of “Countess Bathory” another frolic friendly tune with firmly anti-brutal aspirations. “Impaler Prince“ definitely sounds like a deal, a stylish twisted shredder with both aggressive and technical pretensions, but “Party in Tirgoviste” is just another plodding gothic/doomy exercise elevated to the average parameters by Flegias’ intense dramatic performance behind the mike.

Mentioning the vocals, the man holds his own without changing his traditionally venomous sinister timbre, making no efforts whatsoever in accommodating the numerous mellower condiments epitomized. He growls, shrieks, and recites, even managing to sound like a genuine vampire at times, assisting this Dracul(e)a odyssey to the best of his abilities. The thing is that said odyssey falters on the music front quite a bit, the band failing to convince that an album built around the mythical undead should make such a solid compromise with their innate musical credo. The approach utilized simply lacks energy, immersing the vampire-driven story in a somewhat clumsy anti-climactic mat(t)er, the guys exuding little drama in the process, as it should have been the other way around having in mind the literary/historical source. Instead of composing a rousing sizzling, full of vehemence and passion, vampiric opera, the band have focused on the romantic lovelorn side of the saga, thus depriving their compatriots from Theatres des Vampires of the opportunity to do this first… a strange focusing, provided that the count (Dracula) and the countess (Bathory) never even shared a brief platonic rendezvous; let alone a hot steamy… bloodsucking session.

As already stated, this is neither thrash nor death nor black for more than half the time; this is a conceptual semi-progressive metal opus which is certainly full of musicality, but it could have been done by any other professionally-accomplished band. Peso and Flegias are in a more experimental mode once again, and although inherently they’ve done nothing wrong, it’s hard to view this effort a really high point in their discography, and not only because it’s not an all-out assault on the senses. And, this diversification flirtation has actually left its mark on each of the subsequent recordings, but always as an ornament, never as a persistent leitmotif… and fair play to that. “The Age of Dead Christ” is the album that has tried to exorcise that moment more deliberately, but by that time the band audience have already gotten accustomed to the facelift: more varied, more ambitious, more complex, but always possessing this knack of biting till it bleeds at the most appropriate time, and never stretching the bloodletting beyond the mere mortal's threshold of tolerance.

It´s possible for anyone to have a bad day now and then. Nevertheless, it is an annoyance that Necrodeath released "Draculea". The album is the black sheep of the band´s discography. It sounds meditative, experimental and... lame. I admit that I hate to use these attributes in connection with Necrodeath. But "Draculea" leaves me no choice. Already its strange cover made no sense at all.

How long does this tedious intro last - this was my main thought while listening to "Draculea" for the first time. But far from it. I had to realize soon that this was already the first tune. Aggravating this situation, many parts of the album sounded like the recording of a badly coordinated rehearsal. For example, the first three minutes of the title track were completely useless and the same was true for the beginning of "The Golden Cup". These strange sound collages killed the flow of the album right from the beginning. Even worse, they were neither menacing nor atmospheric. The intention behind this approach remained a mystery.

Honestly, I did not understand the concept of "Draculea". How did the new recording of "Fragments of Insanity" relate to the album´s overarching theme? I have no clue. Its lyrics did not deal with "the warlord of Wallachia" as Marduk liked to say. Furthermore, its musical approach did not match with the remaining tunes. The fast-paced title track of their second full-length stood out because of its rigorousness, but it appeared like a foreign body. It was also beyond comprehension why they covered "Countess Bathory". This lady lived around 100 years after Vlad Tepes so that there is no (evident) correlation between these two persons. In view of this weird construction, I was fairly confused. By the way, the version of Necrodeath did not reveal any new aspects of Venom´s cult classic. It lacked of power and bestiality.

"Draculea" was an experiment. But the attempt to show another interesting side of Necrodeath failed completely. The acquisition of new target groups was doomed to failure in view of a boring intro, a mantra-like outro, two re-recordings and only five new (powerless) songs. With regard to their feeble configuration, even lead vocalist Flegias - usually a fantastic frontman - was not able to change tack. His performance did not achieve an outstanding level.

In contrast to the compositions, the production was on a par with the previous albums of the band. Without lacking in transparency, the mix was generally powerful enough to put heavy songs in the right light. But what a shame that heavy songs were exactly the missing thing on this album. A limited set of good riffs showed up without characterising the sound of the album. However, I guess that "Draculea" was created in order to drive the fans of Necrodeath into despair, for whatever reasons. In this respect, the band was successful.

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.