The bright golden sun burns on your aching head while your senses come back. Bleeding and sweating you awaken on some sort of stone altar while several black cloaked figures surround you. They look pale and bleed from their eyes, red snakes and vermin crawl at their feet. You try to stand up and notice that your body is covered with satanic symbols, carved within your flesh. Dazed you try to remember what put you into this situation. You remember scarce clad and beautiful women seducing you with their slithering tongues. Thereafter … nothing. The figures pull strangely cruel daggers from their robes and begin a hypnotic chant. Slowly they start to carve your flesh some more, performing a dark necromantic ritual. After several minutes - or hours, hard to tell - a deafening roar erupts in your numb mind. Your senses sharpen at once and focus on a cruel horned face that appears in your foggy mindscape. Unbearable piercing eyes… Thoughts running madly filthy and full with despair… You feel your soul being torn brutally from your body… It feels awfully… good.

Necromantia is an old band in the black metal scene and hails from Greece (Athens). The band was formed in 1989. Since the beginning two bandmembers formed the core of the band, being Magus Wampyr Daoloth (bass and vocals) and Baron Blood (8-string bass); also respectively called The Magus and Makis. The Magus is a former Rotting Christ member, does bass and vocals in Thou Art Lord and is active in several other bands. Several other persons also participated in Necromantia. Since 2003 Lethe (also called Akis Kapranos), a former member Naer Mataron and Septic Flesh, plays drums in the band.

The melodic black metal called Necromantia is highly atmospheric. Your mind wanders to the darker and forbidden secrets of ancient Greece. Evil in its pure form is summoned by the haunting gloomy melodies and songs full with blasphemy and damnation. Necromantia’s lyrics deal of Satanism (Satan, demons, the Abyss, pentagrams), Greek myths (for example Hecate, the Greek goddess of the underworld) and other dark subjects (like vampires and black magic). The main strength of Necromantia is the use of two bass guitars, replacing (mostly) the electric guitars. One of the two bass guitars is a self constructed eight-string bass. Because of this the music sounds a bit flat but very heavy and powerful.

This review deals with three Necromantia albums which currently are being re-released: “Crossing the Fiery Path” (9 songs, playing time: 46:15), “Scarlet Evil, Witching Black” - (9 songs, playing time: 53:58) and “IV: Malice” – (8 songs, playing time: 48:32). Though all three albums create the above described feeling, they are also quite different from each other. “Crossing the Fiery Path” was originally released in 1993. The atmospheric black metal on this debut album is enhanced by lots of lengthy melodic interludes.

The album is rich with haunting, diabolical keyboard melodies, orchestral classical parts and spoken word passages. These intermezzo’s can be compared to the atmospheric parts by for example Beherit (“Summerlands”), Summoning and even old horror movies.
“Scarlet Evil, Witching Black”, the second album, was first released in 1995. It is quite different from the first album. The music is a more fast type of black metal that is only on occasion exchanged by orchestral intermezzos. Keyboards are used to give the music atmosphere, but are not as dominant as on “Crossing the Fiery Path”. The music on this album can be compared to a mix of earlier Therion, Enochian Crescent and Samael.
The third album, originally released in 2000, is more or less a balance between the earlier two albums and has some death metal infuences. Evil, melodic and technical black metal, influenced by classical music. Haunting keyboard parts are followed by somewhat happy sounding melodies; a fast death metal solo appears and is soon exchanged by a faster black metal part. The more orchestral parts of the music can be compared to for example Hollenthon.

Al three albums end with a heavy metal cover dealing with darkness, demons and comparable subjects. The cover on the album “Crossing the Fiery Path” is “Death Rider” from US heavy metal band Omen. The song appeared on Omen’s 1984 album “Battle Cry” and deals about a soulless rider from hell which tramples, rapes and kills. The cover on Necromantia’s second album is “Demon’s Whip”, originally played by Manowar on their album “Triumph of Steel”. The song from this US heavy metalband deals with Hell the threat of its demons. The cover on the third album is called “Mordor”, a cover from German heavy metal band Running Wild, which appeared on their album “Branded and Exiled” (1985). Mordor is Tolkien’s empire of darkness, ruled by the power-hungry Sauron. The Omen Cover doesn’t really fit to the rest of the music on “Crossing the Fiery Path”, it’s melodious but a bit too ‘heavy metal’ to be compared by the dark atmosphere of the rest of the album. “Demon’s Whip” on the contrary is a well played addition to “Scarlet Evil, Witching Black”. As with the cover on the first album, the “Mordor” cover doesn’t really fit to the rest of the music, it is a bit too much heavy metal. On itself it would be fine though. All three cover songs also appeared on the 2001 compilation album “Covering Evil (12 Years Doing the Devil`s Work)”, where they were fitting.

In short Necromantia is a very original black metal band that has the ability to create a dark, diabolic atmosphere. The dominance of the bass guitar is the most attractive part of the band in my opinion. All albums are different from each other, and different types of listeners might like them in random order.