NECROMANDUS (Orexis Of Death) LP
This is one of the most obscure dark Heavy Progressive bands from the early 70´s and sadly this album was never offical released, although Vertigo were showing interest. During 1972 and 1973 they toured a lot with the mighty Black Sabbath in the UK and Tony Iommi quickly took them under his wing, due to the uniqueness of their music and the mystical image. In early 1973 the band entered the Morgan studios and Iommi not only guested on the title track, adding some subtile Jazz-Rock soloing. He also produced the whole album but the circumstances weren´t the easiest for Iommi, because he was totally involved in touring and recordind with Black Sabbath and so he was losing interest after it all, the band fell apart and this album never saw the light of day. It was really a great shame because "Orexis Of Death" offers so much variety.
The album starts like a lost Sabbath record with howling sirens and a short intro, played by Tony Iommi which comes close to tracks like "Embryo" etc. Then comes the hard-riffing doomy and groovy "Nightjar", a song that´s a total prototype of a doom or stoner or whatever-you-want-to-call-it track. After this track the next songs aren´t so heavy, but if you into a mixture of Jazz influenced heavy Prog rock with a slight The Who/Black Sabbath vibe, you will be real satified with it. NECROMANDUS contains excellent musicians and I´m still speechless how timeless this album sounds after all this years and it won´t get boring for a minute. I´ve become a huge fan of NECROMANDUS fan after I´ve found a (bootleg?) CD release in the early 90´s, but the Italian Black Widow label has been put a lot of work into this limited vinyl release. "Orexis Of Death" comes up with a fantastic gatefold sleeve and extensive liner notes. The cover is the same, as the early 90´s release but different from the "Quicksand release", that was also released in 1991. I hope, that you aren´t too confused about all this different releases. For everyone who´s interested in the roots of our favourite heavy music you need to buy this gloomy masterpiece, no doubt about it.
(KK)