Blast Head Records - 2013
We'll start with a simple analogy:
____________ is to Roman death metal as Nile is to Egyptian death metal
If you are not answering ADE, then you clearly haven't heard of them. From the same lands that have given us Hour of Penance, Fleshgod Apocalypse, and Hideous Divinity, chalk up ADE as the next big Italian death metal band that you need to familiarize yourself with! I use the Nile comparison for two reasons: first, George Kollias did some drum work for the album and second, it gives you a sense of the amount of class on this album. This is ADE's second release of Roman-themed death metal and what strikes me most is how ingeniously they integrate the appropriate, traditional instruments (think Gladiator or 300) alongside the technical, blistering death metal without watering down either one. Despite the frenzied pace, the traditional instruments help to keep things fresh and add a level of grandeur that not many find in this particular sub-genre. It also helps that they keep things from being a complete blastfest and know how to slow things down with a bone-crushing riff. Take one of my personal favorites, "Six Thousand Crosses": it opens on a slow build and doesn't really enter the frenzied zone until about a minute in only to slow things back down a bit with one of the album's most bludgeoning riffs at 1:15. "The Endless Runaway" also works in this same mechanism with some excellent interplay between the guitars and the instrumentation throughout it's playtime. You'd be hard-pressed to play Spartacus from beginning to end and not have at least 5-6 riffs on repeat in your head for the next few hours. That's not to say that you won't get plenty of blasting if that's what you are into and it works very well in tracks like "For Everything to Be the Same", and "Divinitus Victor".
If you enjoy any type of death metal, you really can't go wrong with this one!
ADE
Betrayer from Thrace
Dueling the Shadow of Spartacus
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