Necromandus
Orexis Of Death

The group I want to introduce to you is a little-known band from the early 70s: Necromandus.

The journey of this formation was unfortunately not among the luckiest: after having played far and wide in pubs of their hometown, they managed to catch the attention of Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath, who took them under his protective wing and offered to be their manager. After recording their debut album under Iommi's production, unfortunately, they did not find a label interested in publishing, and the album remained unreleased. Shortly after, the group disbanded.

Twenty years later, a small label specializing in 70s prog and downer rock released for the first time the until-then-unreleased album called "Orexis of Death". From the very first listen, one immediately notices a certain similarity to Black Sabbath, but what amazes is the precision of the execution, the jazzy feel "à la" Patto (another unfortunately unlucky band of the time), and the instrumental value of the band. A sort of Progressive Metal Jazz Rock in short.

The track opening the album is "Nightjar", which is somewhat the "single" of the album, a nice ride in shuffle time with prominently highlighted power chords, and it is one of the more direct tracks of the album in which Tony Iommi participates as a special guest on the guitar solo, but the best is yet to come... The album's title track is another great piece: after a beautiful descending guitar arpeggio, the song takes off with a wild rhythm and nice guitar overlaps, the vocal performance is powerful and raspy and during the finale, the track is tinged with jazzy hues with a fine bebop guitar solo.

No less interesting on the jazz-rock side are the tracks "A Black Solitude" "Gypsy Dancer", quite similar to each other but equally valid, with beautiful guitar sounds. In fact, I'd like to focus on these: the main characteristic of the group's sound is precisely the ability to play very driven pieces with an almost clean guitar sound, at most "crunch", and especially the beauty and clarity of the arpeggios, almost always played both acoustically and electrically, truly remarkable... "Homicidal Psycopath" is another beautiful track with a nice 5/4 rhythm and a good vocal performance..

The whole album is truly remarkable despite perceiving a certain rawness in the production (given that the album was not completed) but perhaps it adds something in terms of charm, and the group is truly bonded, in addition to having a very original sound in its mix of Jazz rock, progressive, and metal...

A group that deserved more but unfortunately was not fortunate, yet at least left us with this beautiful album to discover and appreciate.

Enjoy listening.