AKRAL NECROSIS - Pademic Dominion

Akral Necrosis is already a familiar name in the Romanian underground metal scene. Having played with big names of the European underground, such as Negura Bunget, Cirith Gorgor, Ancient Rites, Necrodeath or Hecate Enthroned, with a lot of shows but not many appearances in the Romanian press, Akral Necrosis have managed to develop a base of dedicated fans, despite the rather modest representation of this genre around these parts. The first contact with their music dates back in 2006, more precisely the first rehearsals of the band, when the band also included the keyboard player Andrei "Krimson" and bass player Razvan (former member of Sincarnate). Years have passed, the band has undergone countless changes of line-up, perhaps as many as the Americans from Pentagram in 40 years of career, but the core has remained the same. Vocalist Octav, guitarist Victor and drummer Alex have always believed in what they were doing and did not give up on their passion for black metal despite the trends. In fact Akral Necrosis even ended up on a Terrorizer compilation, with a mini article praising the band.

I won’t go on too much with all sorts of stories about the band and I will restrict myself to this material. Titled Pandemic Dominion, it gives us the band’s most important songs from the period 2006 - 2009, their first 3 years in almost 40 minutes of veritable metal sound. What you need to understand is that Akral Necrosis is more than black metal. They don’t just limit themselves to trite metal, and have punchy performances that will remind you of Bay Area style thrash metal (they’re no Metallica but they know what they’re doing!) and the European black metal scene, all seasoned with quite a lot of progressive death metal á la Death (Do you hear the bass? Lev’s pretty cool, eh?) and even some heavy/power metal on the guitar part, reminding of diabolic creations from the 80s of the Danes of Mercyful Fate. Well, the latter are not that obvious, but the band’s effort is praiseworthy. Especially since the end result is so interesting and solid.

With titles such as Now Descends the Angel, Pandemic Dominion, Slay the Whore (a true anthem or "hit" of the band!), the demonical House of Slavery, the melodic Reflections in Blood, Pandemic Dominion can easily be classified as a "Best of"! If you like extreme metal, if you love old-school demonic metal, you simply can’t not love this record! Genuine black metal, demonic and filled to the bone with hatred!

H. Nota: 8.5