VADER — Necropolis (review)

VADER — Necropolis album cover Album · 2009 · Death Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
3.5/5 ·
voila_la_scorie
My second Vader purchase, following the "less is more" purchasing scheme. Effectively, spending less money per CD (i.e. cheaper CDs) means being able to buy more. Yes, there were two other albums I wanted more but decided to go instead for a highly rated album that was under ¥900 from Amazon's marketplace.

I was really thrilled about my first purchase, "Revelations", and after sampling various Vader albums on YouTube, I concluded that pretty much any album would be a suitable follow up. And true to expectation, "Necropolis" delivers just about everything I loved about "Revelations". Same brutal, heavy guitars; same aggressive attack on the drums; and most importantly, same Piotr "Peter" Wiwczarek scary, angry biker vocals.

The album includes eleven tracks, many of which run under three minutes and a couple under two minutes, so this is not an album about long conceptual songs. Still, some of the tracks flow from one to the next, suggesting there could be some concept, maybe. Two of the tracks are not actual songs. "The Seal" is some deep chanted word that sounds like "zuel" or "zoo" and some deep, ominous chuckling, and "Summoning the Futura" is a summoning rite conducted on a stormy night with booms of thunder.

The rest of the tracks are quite similar really: crushing, explosive metal played either at mid-tempo or high speed. I think the combination of Wiwczarek's vocals, the heavier-than-Slayer guitars, and the percussive assault make any of these songs stand out as pretty fecking awesome heavy music. I am tempted to point out that there is no real deviation from the formula established by the band. Based on the two albums I own plus what I have sampled, I could suggest that Vader are the KISS of death metal, meaning they release album after album without any surprises. These guys don't appear to be heading towards prog or goth metal anytime soon, or bringing in any piano or harmonica. It expect there's just brutal, heavy, sometimes fast, non-technical, non-complex death metal. It could almost make owning more than a few albums redundant, but I really like the sound of this band so much that I have ordered a third album and I'm eyeballing at least two more.

One thing I don't like however is the 2:30 seconds of empty space after the rather awesome "Where the Sun Drowns the Dark", which is then concluded with some guitar effects and an impossibly deep growl. I despise blank spaces at the end of albums, especially when the last song is a good one.

If you've never heard Vader, this album might not be the first anyone would recommend, but it does give a very good idea of how the band sounds and what they're about.
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