Necronomicon
Tips Zum Selbstmord

THE REVIEW

According to the writer of fantastic stories Howard Phillips Lovecraft, the Necronomicon (whose original title in Arabic is Al Azif) is a black magic text written by an Arabic sorcerer named Abdul Alhazred, who lived in Yemen in the 8th century AD and died in Damascus under mysterious circumstances (said to have been torn to pieces in broad daylight by an invisible being). Wikipedia

It is already late at night. Therefore, for good-neighbor reasons, I decide to put on my headphones and disconnect myself and this record from the real world. The dim light from the computer screen from which I am writing emits enough light to make the keyboard well visible, but my living room is as dim as my clouded thoughts, when this "Consigli Per Il Suicidio" starts playing.

"Prologue" begins with a male voice warming up with some vocalizations, betraying emotion even in the nervous laughter that escapes at one point, before finding the right chord to start the guitar in a long, somewhat heavy-metal solo, if you will, where at a certain point other instruments join in to draw a garage-blues, savage and impetuous like a horde of barbarians launching an assault on a defenseless village to culminate in a sort of pagan ritual to appease the god of plunder, rotten and corrupt in the depths of the bowels, which returns violent and raging for the finale. The adrenaline that entered the bloodstream like a pinball between the bumpers and flippers seems to hysterically pump blood in circulation until it calms down as soon as one enters the calm and cold mists of nature, and "Requiem Der Natur" becomes a sweet and ethereal folk ballad, with dual vocals singing "soothing" litanies in the Teutonic language, over a very soft accordion loop, a bass that pulses proudly and confidently, and a gentle guitar that unwittingly guide the piece into a sickly swamp, infested with the presences of Nature, with voices of supernatural beings and women's choirs that seem to emerge from an ajar church's stained glass. A jazzy interlude breaks the tension that picks up at the end of these long and thrilling almost eleven minutes, with the voices returning to recapture the same mood.

The title track incorporates garage, psychedelia, and hard rock, blending them into a muddy kraut humus and vomiting them out in a rush of adrenaline; deviant even for the strongest and most conscious souls... Amon Düül II who cover Jefferson Airplane high on amphetamines and also singing in their mother tongue. "Die Stadt" talks about a city of the future and is built on a very space-oriented folk ballad that recalls Hawkwind even when it gets rocky, but the kraut side of Aachen's sextet nevertheless prevails, making the atmospheres always overloaded with that soul weighed down by recent German history, which united all the underground artists of the period, making them profoundly unique compared to the music scene in the rest of the world. "In Memoriam" starts off Hendrix-like and transforms into a post-apocalyptic lament, enriched with continuous changes of space and time that disrupt its continuum... a violent tirade against modern consumerism (sigh...!!!). In the final "Requiem Von Ende" they become more ethereal and launch themselves in search of a common thread that summarizes and condenses all the themes expressed throughout the album... a track of rare emotional intensity and skillful technique in the service of a theatrical romantic musical composition.

And to close, I start from the beginning again, leaving you with the words of the mystic Abdul Alhazred that introduce the Necronomicon: «The night opens upon the brink of the abyss. The gates of hell are closed: you attempt them at your own risk. Something will awaken to respond to your call. This gift I leave to humanity: here are the keys. Seek the locks; be satisfied. But listen to what Abdul Alhazred says: I was the first to find them: and I am mad.»

Enjoy the listening.