While the likes of Fleshgod Apocalypse, Hour of Penance, Logic of Denial and such get the lions share of the attention when it comes to Italian death metal, a couple of lesser known Italian bands have come to my attention of late- namely Inverted and Necrosy. Inverted with their impressive The Age of Harvest and Necrosy and their self released debut, Perdition.

Necrosy’s main draw is their speed and not just speed, I mean SPEED. When you have a song that has 32obpm listed in the title, (“Drown into Perdition (at 320 bpm)”) you have no doubt what is coming. And the source of that speed is drummer/founder Christian Giusto (who actually did all the instruments on vocals on the bands previous demo). And let me tell you, this guy might be the next big thing in death metal drumming. Assuming he’s legit, he makes Janne Saarenpää (The Crown) and John Longstreth and his gravity blasts look like Def Leppard‘s Rick Allen, to the point you’d swear it was programmed. Even some of the slow parts are filled with ridiculously fast double bass fills (i.e “Eternal Realms”).

So with Guisto at front and center behind the kit, he has surrounded himself with some relative unknowns and newcomers to fill out Necrosy, and it comes together pretty well. Luckily, the speed is backed up with solid, modern death metal song writing and dynamics. Using a sort of Behemoth on crack mixed with some of their above mentioned country mates and a little Origin as a backbone, Perdition a pretty damn solid offering. It’s of course centered around Guitso and his drums, but the songs are well rounded, with a few atmospheric flourishes, well paced, well produced and skillfully played.

After “Preludio”, the aforementioned “Drown into Perdition (at 320 bpm)” shows you the band’s goods right away, highlighting Guisto right of the bat around big burly riffs and bellows. “Sea of illusions” follows, being even more more of a percussive salvo, but with a nice groove and bridge, showing the band can creak the assault up pretty effortlessly. And therein lies the band’s skill, Guisto knows he is fast and good but allows the material to at least breathe once in a while as heard on “Eternal Realms”, the opening Behemoth ish roar of “Flesh Script”, “Ascending Mourning”  or standout “Beyond Inside Your Metal Walls”, rather then just beat a dead horse with 300bpm songs for 40 minutes.

But when they do beat a dead horse, its flayed and skinned beyond belief, leaving your jaw on the floor. So when you do want your face ripped off go to the opening couple of tracks or “No Solution”, “Impulsive Whispering” and closer “Abstract Vortex” will give you finger tapping air drummers an aneurysm and carpel tunnel syndrome. So with the speed, control production and synths coming together perfectly, Perdition is a pretty damn good death metal album, and a rising star in the making in Italian death metal.

[Visit the band's website]

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