Day: November 28, 2016

The Romanian Era Decay, despite being active only since 2008, with Inritum already arrive at their fifth full length, a sign of a production already full-bodied compared to the average. Even if it is often underestimated, this is an aspect that must be taken into account when you have to express assessments after listening to an album: it follows, therefore, that a band at the first or second disc will tolerate more a lack of originality, looking for the freshness of composition, while, on the contrary, those who already have a fairly substantial discography will be required with more rigor a manifestation of personality. Era Decay are in a situation a bit spurious, in this sense, since if their record turnover is already equal to some bands over forty years old, they are still quite young and therefore with intact possibilities to further develop their musical path. The peculiarity of the Romanian band is to move in a stylistic space that is halfway between melodic death and death doom, and not always the balance is perfect even if this avoids them to appear faded photocopies of more famous bands belonging to one or the other scene. In my opinion, compared to what I would have expected, the doom component is not so marked and it’s just when this happens that the best hits come out (both Sharp Words and Restlessness are splendid), making you think that, pushing a little more on that side, an already good record could have become excellent. I think it’s basically a matter of taste, because for sure those who prefer melodic death will think differently from me, with more than one good reason, since the Romanian guys are authors of a convincing performance, compact and without smears even if, at least for my judgment, unable to climb the often step that separates the beautiful album from the essential one. Finally, the aspects on which Era Decay can surely improve (and having margins of improvement when you are already quite good should be seen only in a positive perspective) are two: the first one is the reduction of the existing gap between the two mentioned songs, excellent examples of death doom, and others like Ferocious and Syncope, episodes much more direct and death matrix in the true sense of the term, while the second could be a reasoned recourse to keyboards with the task of binding the sound in the more melodic songs, because sometimes the result that comes out is a bit too dry and essential. That said, Inritum is a work that deserves to be listened regardless of the genre assigned to it in the presentation, also because labeling it as death doom risks to be misleading, going to the detriment of Era Decay itself.

2016 – Independent