Necrodeath

Necrodeath

Defragments of Insanity

Scarlet Records

Release: 5 April 2019

This 2019 album is a newly recorded version of the 1989 album Fragments of Insanity. It features the same eight songs and in the same order as the 1989 work.

Necrodeath is a 1980s Italian underground extreme metal band that split in 1990 after recording a demo and two albums in the 1980s. The two albums are regarded well by the collectors of all things 1980s underground/lesser-known extreme metal bands. The two old albums have a huge vibe of Kreator thrash all over them, as reviewers have observed throughout the years. In 1998 the name of the band came back. Nowadays, in comparison with the 1989 album, only the drummer remains from the musicians that recorded the original work. Metal Archives shows the 1989 line-up:

Marco "Peso" Pesenti drums

Ingo vocals, guitars

Claudio guitars

Paolo bass

While the 2019 line-up is listed as:

Peso drums (1985-1990, 1998-present)

Flegias vocals (1998-present)

Pier Gonella guitars (2007-present)

GL bass (2008-present)

Why do musicians record new versions of old albums? Sometimes it is a question of legal matters. Sometimes young musicians sign their lives away and do not own the rights to their music and when they try to release an old album the old owner wants lots of money for an album that never sold that much anyway. Sometimes musicians find themselves dissatisfied with the quality of old recordings and really want to give a proper production to albums that have annoyed them for years. Sometimes bands don’t have new material and it’s time to put out some new product. It could be contractual obligations. Maybe it is artistic reasons or financial or legal reasons or all of the above. In this case it is possible that the band has gotten tired of people complaining about this incarnation of Necrodeath as being a false one. Maybe they have read that these particular musicians are incapable of playing the old material properly.

Those old songs always were good, and pretty much a thrasher’s dream. Pedal-to-the-metal thrash that crosses over into the early death metal and black metal sounds in a variety of ways. The vocals are in the style of old Mille Petrozza/Quorthon. The drumming steps up the speed and intensity, compared to other thrash in 1989, like the U.S. and Bay Area thrash. There are no attempts to be progressive or jazzy. That remains unchanged in the new album. It is unapologetic headbanging metal.

The musicianship on this new version is superior to the old album. The experience is so much bigger and better. Peso’s drumming now has decades of experience. The vocals are in the same style as before, but Flegias has a lot more than a debut album of experience, now with at least 10 albums as vocalist for Necrodeath. The guitarist is a hundred times better than the young ones were in 1989. Pier Gonella is very skilled and can play pretty much any style of metal guitar, not just thrash. From neoclassical to power to traditional heavy metal to extreme metal, he has done it with his other bands.

The production is better, of course. Here’s the deal. It seems like in metal people are no fans of bands going back and recording new versions of old songs. Whether it is Exodus, Destruction, Anthrax or Testament, the old thrash fans just don’t really go for new versions. People who have the old album are understandably going to be skeptical, and the old people who have the vinyl or cassette are not about to change. However, younger fans probably do not have the old material and now will be able to get a copy of this one.

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