This is the sixth album by the 21-year-old band from California, with only Jadran “Conan” Gonzalez (Guitars, Vocals) still in the band, while Phillip Nuñez (Bass) and Chase Becker (Guitars) joined before their last album and Adrian Aguilar (Drums) shortly after. This 12-song album has a couple of instrumentals, a cover and plenty of heaviness filled with intricate melodies highlighting excellent songwriting abilities.
The opening instrumental if filled with a marching time signature that carries “Masquerade” into “Mask of Red Death” where the drumming picks up the pace considerably, as the popping bass is clearly audible over the growled vocals and higher pitched lead breaks that follow along to the main riffs and fight to the fore repeatedly.
The chorus on “Oathbreaker” harks back to days of old when it was mandatory for an audience to be able to chant along before a lengthy lead solo would come to the fore, and all done at a rather manic pace for good measure.
Keeping things fast, “Mind of Metal” has the feel of both a power metal track owing to the incessant lead squawks, but also death aggression when the drumming becomes rather animated before the leads take us firmly back into former category once more.
“Storm of Strings” is exactly as the title describes, where the violins are played virtuously on the electric guitar with gusto and more importantly clinical precision, blending classic with metal as it should be done.
On “Test of Time”, the gruff vocals are delivered with added enunciation and clarity to show that it’s not only the guitars that can be finely honed to perform with perfect intonation.
The rather epic “Darkest of Knights” tells its complex story with rumbling bass accompanying frantic kick drumming to match the unrelenting riffs as they move from one to the next.
Almost funky in comparison, “Prophecy” as a rolling riff that everything flows around, keeping the vocals steady and allowing to the bass line to dominate the show, even if the lead trade-off attempt to steal the limelight before it ends.
“Children of the Night” is another lengthy song, but this time it’s delicately delivered as the guitars slowly work their way to a crescendo and spill over into an exquisite bass line that has the leads falling over themselves to keep up while the vocals have a playful quality to their inflection.
Adrian’s impressive drum work on “Beyond the Grave” flicks between crawling and frantically paces, forcing the guitars to adjust their heaviness to this pace, but still allowing the leads to soar majestically over the throaty roars.
The final instrumental “Overture” takes us gently into the title track “Necrophony” where the mixture of speed and harmony are combined with finesse that lets the leads dominate the soundscape while they are being played, but without needing to drown out all the other instruments to get that coveted attention.
When “Moonchild” started on my first play through of the album, my first thought was “Damn! If they don’t sound like Iron Maiden all of a sudden” and then I paid a little more attention and realised the reason and must admit they certainly did an excellent job of adapting their predominately speedy thrash, death style to accommodate the clean vocals and fiddly guitar harmonies. Job well done I must say, and the same goes for the rest of the album for that matter.
(8/10 Marco Gaminara)
Leave a Reply