Necronomicon
Invictus

Let me tell you a little story, or maybe several stories as I did in the Swedish version of this review where I found it hard to keep my focus and found myself moving in all kinds of directions, lets hope I do better this time. Necronomicon is a grimoire that amongst others is found in the works of H.P. Lovecraft, it is also the name of a few bands, some accounts say that two german bands have this name, I did note in my research for this short story that there was one occult canadian band that had this name and of course a “legendary” german thrash metal band, legends fits well for a band with a name like this I think. Al Azif is the original name of the book that was written in the eight century by a mad arab who did worship the likes of Cthulhu and the book was later translated to greek where it got its name Necronomicon, there are rumours about english translations but none seem to have survived. Stories from Necronomicon is actually quite frequent in the works of german metal band Rage who loves the “Old Ones”, you can find them on albums like The Missing Link, Unity, Soundchaser and more.

Not much in terms of Lovecraftian literature in the Invictus album by the band called Necronomicon though. Invictus which by the way can mean invincible, undisputed and so on, it is a word that comes from latin but there is not much in terms of this literature and lingual connection to be found in the lyrics which also are quite repetitive. The review site Metal Temple’s reviewer counted the number of repetitions of the title in the song Thoughts Running Free to 35 in a five minute song which means one repetition every eight and a half second, that’s a lot. But I found the sound being quite good, the production is very solid maybe thank’s to Achim Köhler who has done a lot of good work over the years. The Necronomicon is a quite hefty book according to the references in Lovecraft’s stories one reference is to a spell on the 751st page and as the book have to be hand written it is probably written on thick paper as well, and the same goes for the album Invictus which in its digipak edition is over 70 minutes long. Even without bonus tracks it reaches beyond the 50 minute mark so almost as long as the Necronomicon.

The story I wanted to tell though was the one of the competent thrash metal albeit not the most original of thrash metal, that succumb to the lure of repeating oneself too much. It is much like the boy who cried wolf, it worked a few times before the people saw through it and when the wolf came people thought he was joking and it is a bit like that towards the end of this album as well, the good stuff gets lost in a migraine from hearing the same stuff over and over again. I think though that loosing your concentration on content is a better way of describing it though, for sure the album being good gets more and more lost towards the end because of the repetitive nature of the songs and them not being the most varied either.

So I do not really think these possible Lovecraft fans can do justice to their literary references but their album is quite good, although hardly any music can really sustain an interest for 70 minutes and this is no exception. I came to more wondering and dreaming out own passages for the Necronomicon book rather than focusing on what I heard on this album and that led to a misguided and Moby Dick stylised Swedish review while this one at least kept more on the subject and the remaining story is about the band who succumb to their own delusions of grander and illusions of their own musical quality that they never understood the thesis that we of Hallowed always understands: Less is More, it just is and especially in music. You just should always kill darlings in your creative process, if you don’t the result will be a 70 minutes waste of what could have been. Good but too long is the remaining impression.