Derdian
New Era Pt. 2 - War Of The Gods

The Derdian are one of those bands that not everyone is aware of, and that no one dares to approach, a sort of fascinating and at the same time terrifying musical black hole.

"New Era Pt. 2 - War Of The Gods" is their fourth album and I don’t understand why the previous ones didn’t sell millions of copies with plenty of critical and public veneration. This one, however, is not a bad record; if other bands had come out with something so masterfully executed and full of personality as any of the Milanese sextet's productions, including "New Era Pt. 2 - War Of The Gods", they would have received praise and accolades from all sides. Unfortunately, however, Derdian has accustomed us ever since the historic "Revenge" to much more, and what "New Era Pt. 2 - War Of The Gods" is blatantly lacking is precisely that extra something that has always elevated Derdian above the crowd.

Of the 11 tracks, most of them denote the band's exquisitely personal touches, so we find Joe’s warm voice, the unusual rhythm of Salvatore Giordano and Fulvio Manganini, the whimsical guitar phrases of Dario Radaelli and Enrico Pistolese, all blended together by Marco Garau’s keyboards and, above all, those melodies and harmonious vocal mixes that are a bit of the main characteristic of this formation. Nonetheless, everything appears as if suffocated by an impending weight and the songs never manage to explode as they did in the past. Much better are those with a sharper and more updated cut: "The Unter" and "War of the Gods" which have an almost paroxysmal violence that Derdian didn’t know before.

"New era" is a wall of noise that could be the power metal response of a band that instead was accustomed to taming noise. The other songs have all the flavor of the past production of a historic Milanese sextet of beasts dressed in leather.

We just hope that the silent planet doesn’t collapse and disappear in our universe.