Description
2024 Remaster, Limited Edition Coloured Vinyl comes in embossed cover with renewed artwork and soft-touch lamination, as well as printed innersleeve with full lyrics, restored for the first time.
For the first time on vinyl, the fifth full-length studio album by cult German Thrash Metal band.
Necronomicon was perhaps sometimes known as a 'poor man's Destruction', but they had their moments, most notably 1988's "Escalation". There are still comparisons to be made to Destruction, especially as Volker's vocals still persist in their painful pinch a-la Schmier, but the riffs seem to have come into a life of their own. Much of "Construction Of Evil" has a tight, consistent flow to it, a steady violence, fun tracks like "Stormbringer", "Paralizer", "Bone Daddy" and "Hard Pain", loaded with well-meaning guitars, flighty leads and bitter, biting vocals.
The album adheres very strongly to the original mixture of aggressive vocal shouts and melodic riffing observed on their early albums, but with a much cleaner production and a bit of an awareness of the newer German Power Metal acts that came out of the mid to late 1990s such as Paragon and Iron Savior. This is particularly noticeable in the peculiar sound and character of the lead guitar tracks. Naturally, the mix here is far superior to what they've done before, from a technical standpoint. The instruments are very well-balanced, the vocals at the forefront without robbing the guitars of their power.
Likewise, the band's mastery of the gang chorus is almost enough to put Anthrax and Overkill to shame. The lead and gang backup interchanges on the chorus sections of "Fiction" and "Paralizer" succeed in being twice as bombastic as what was heard on "Taking Over" or "Among The Living", while being just a little too aggressive for much of the German Power Metal scene.
Stylistically, the variation in approach from song to song mostly hearkens back to the mid to late 80s approach, mostly being dominated by speed songs with the occasional slower rocker and token half-ballad. "Alight" and "Hills of Dead" have a lot of German pre-Thrash elements and NWOBHM leanings. "Terrorist Attack" definitely carries some heavy Accept influences, as well as a gloomy piano line which is fairly uncharacteristic for a straight Thrash Metal outfit. "Fireball" has this sombre acoustic line to it that meshes with some standard Power chord riffing to form a middle ground between Anthrax and Bad Religion. It's certainly the catchiest and vocally melodic of what's on here, but occasionally kicks in the speed to keep it from being a straight power ballad.
To the prospective shopper of faster Metal with a taste for the old school, this is something that can appeal equally to fans of Old-school Thrash Metal, early US Power Metal and early German Speed Metal. The only thing that the latter two groups of fans should consider is that Freddy Fredrich's gravely vocal style is more akin to the semi-melodic shouts of Kreator and Destruction than the less dirty melodic vocal approach of Rolf Kasperek or Udo Dirkschneider. But for fans of German Thrash Metal, this is far superior to what most of their scene has been offering in the first decade of the current century.
