You may like or dislike heavy metal music, that's fair enough,
but anyone who claims that our style of music makes you stupid is a plain fool.
Take Ex Deo. It's a bloody learning experience, it is!
Roman history always fascinated me deeply. The Roman empire's ability to be exactly that; an empire
despite all the different peoples, all the different cultures and religions. The
reach and the magnitude of this machine of bureaucracy and military was immense
and something it took centuries a hordes of barbarians to break down.
The emperors have often become the centre of our attention because they were
great warlords and statesmen. Some of them were of course also completely nuts.
Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, called Calicula (little boot) was one
of them. This time, Ex Deo, Kataklysm main man Maurizio Iacono's side project,
has decided to tell the story of this at first respected and popular emperor who
then turned into a perverted tyrant. His 2000th birthday is in two days, by the
way, and the album very appropriately is released on that day. Neat detail!
The word appropriate can be used in another connection in this review. The music
delivered by the Canadians is appropriately majestic as I'd expect when the
story told is about a Roman emperor.
It all sounds great. Plain and simple. Bombast,
heaviness, well-wrought songs. Synths are of course used to add extra layers of
atmosphere and they go hand in hand with the melodic death metal foundation the
entire effort is built upon.
Death metal for history students - I'm loving it! Hail Ex Deo!
