Arendal Rock Klubb Hellion shows often excellent metal concerts with good sound quality and more than reasonable entrance fee. I just cannot understand why so few people came to Negură Bunget (Romania), one of the most interesting atmospheric black metal band ever, supported by The Stone (Black metal, Serbia), The Way of Purity (Black-grind, Sweden) and Neochrome. National day two days later? Lack of communication? Stormy weather, with rain, thunder and lightning? I do not know. Les absents ont toujours tort.

Neochrome, from Debrecen in Hungary, gave an excellent performance, despite the small (but happy) audience. I promised Vee (vocals, guitar) to share my humble but real enthusiasm on powerofmetal.dk. I wanted first to listen to ”Downfall / Collapse" from 2007 and the 2009 version of "Manifestation of the Forgotten Subconscious", remixed and remastered. The original recording is from 2004, but I have no copy to compare it with the new one.

Neochrome did not create a music genre, for sure. But Neochrome surely knows the fundamentals of a good metal song: composing killing riffs and finding the best way to put them together, with well-found links and breaks, clear or distorted arpeggi. Not a revolution, but metal the way we like it. Call it black-death-dark metal, we get what we want with ”Downfall / Collapse". Vee did also a nice job with recording, mix and mastering.

"Manifestation of the Forgotten Subconscious", it is melodic and efficient black metal, spiced with many death and other metals ideas, and it goes just fine. The re-recorded voice of this new version works perfect too.

Thanks to this sense of composition and the knowledge of song writing’s magic formula, these two records show neither weak nor boring parts. The execution is full of precision and muscle, as the production. Pleasure, just pleasure, for your ears and mine.

They are looking for a new record company. I hope they will get a contract soon and deliver a third record.