?Classics? of power metal #2: ADRAMELCH - Irae Melanox (1988)

Past exposure to this band/record:  None at all.  The reason I know about Irae Melanox is because in my perfunctory scans of the review scene, the few people who knew Irae at all really liked it and couldn't stop going on about how singular a record it is compared to anything else.  Sounded like a good fit for this project...

I pay a lot of attention to how a record chooses to introduce itself.  In this case, that would be "Fearful Visions."  Creepy choral opening full of organs yields a rather frenetic chromatic guitar scale, until that settles into a doomy groove, until the guitars take over into more of a standard metal groove, until we get a singer whose vocal delivery I don't know if I can describe.  First he's reeling off heavily accented poetry with a mouth full of marbles, then he's screaming out the pre-chorus more in a manner more typical of a European gent fronting a power metal band.  And that's all in the first three minutes of the record!  Did I mention that the song is eight minutes long?

Suffice to say, Irae Melanox is a lot.  I am nowhere near wrapping my head around the noises I am hearing at this point.  And although he shifts back and forth between lazy mid-range and shrieks with mixed levels of success, lead vocalist Vittorio Ballerio isn't even the most unusual part of the Adramelch's sound; most of the weirdness for me comes from the song structures.  Every time I start asking myself whether the record is really that unique, whether there are really that many elements I haven't heard somewhere else, I remember that I never know where any given song is going.  A lot of songs in the world have a Maiden-esque gallop and a lot of songs in the world have a slow simmering creepy soundscape.  But not usually in the same song and within thirty seconds of each other!

Irae Melanox has a thorough backing in what for lack of a better term I'll hand-wavingly call prog; the genre-taggers seem to put the album in both the "power metal" and "prog metal" buckets.  I've alluded in other posts to my mixed embrace of prog.  In short, though, I find prog metal to be a better idea in theory than in execution.  My snobbish conviction is that rock musicians who think that they can compose like Brahms generally can't, and metal bands who think they can rawk while also reproducing the complexity of a King Crimson generally are doubly delusional.  Give me less weebidy-weebidy noodling and more chorus that I actually want to listen to, you pretentious chodes!   And yet, as a fan of novelty almost for its own sake, I'm still always looking for songs that'll surprise me, on the grounds that the few that don't suck will probably be great.*  Anyway, my usual gestalt is that if a record is proggy enough, it'll take at least one listen more than I would a non-prog record to even decide whether I like it.  Usually I do at least know pretty early whether a prog-metal record is worth my ongoing attention; not quite sure yet about Irae, though.  I think I'm most likely going to end up concluding that it's an interesting mix whose songs aren't cohesive enough to live up to their potential, but that's basically a guess at this point.

Listen to listen I can't even agree on which elements are working for me.**  This most recent spin the title track was clicking for me - both the "normal" chorus and a whoa-whoa-whoa chorals that dominate its last few minutes, whereas last listen I found it the most unpleasant listen of the whole set.  "Was Called Empire"*** can stand out as a hooky earworm or as an indulgence in unusually pedestrian '80 cheese... during the same listen.  Each song is made of good and bad parts, and I'm not even sure which are which.  I do think that my favorite fist-pumping moment is when "Decay" shifts in its final minutes to the "fight, beware, your life belongs to you," a bit of soaring that makes more sense in the context of the rest of the song.  

To the end, this record is just not quite as expected.  Adramelch could easily have made dark swirling lines and unsettling singing (the kind of wailing I want to call "screaming" even when it's not) into their trademark sound.  Instead, they follow up the sonically pitch dark "Eyes Of Alabaster" with the much more straightforwardly hooky "Dreams Of A Jester..." although only after two and half minutes of sprawling riffage until we actually get into the song.  Now, that's one of the songs whose chorus I can instantly call to mind.  We're left with a band who can write singalongs, but they choose not to.  

I guess it's a good thing that a record released in 1988 can still elicit the reaction "okay, this is just weird, I dunno."

A few other thoughts:

- When dealing with gems underground enough to not get their own Wikipedia pages, searching for info is a little less straightforward****, so the information I dig up about basic facts like, say, who was in the band may be limited, or just wrong.  Yeah, yeah, I'm sure you didn't have even that back in the days when you had to trade cassettes and hunt down out of print magazines.  So, there's a lot I don't know.  When I hear two voices, when is it two guys and when is it just two Vittorio vocal tracks?  Why is a tune that sounds a lot like "Scarborough Fair" the basis for the interlude "Lamento" and the full song "Was Called Empire" whilst there's another track in between those two?  Why does "Dreams Of A Jester" end with a big symphonic chord after eschewing such effects for the rest of its length?  (As big and crazy as Iarae Melanox gets, clearly a core metal band without keyboards, synths, or strings.) 

- Although English clearly isn't anyone's first language, the band seem just fluent enough to convey the cynical tone of many of the lyrics.  I'm appreciating that.  Not that I'm a morose bastard, just that in my experience it's a bit unusual for power metal to be so much about the downtrodden who stay that way.

- One can probably pinpoint my exact age from the fact that I will never not hear the chant-screams of "Zephirus!" as "Sephiroth!"

Favorite track:  "Decay (Saver Comes)"

Runner up:  "Dreams Of A Jester"

Least favorite track:  "Zephirus"

Very preliminary rating:  3/5

Next:  More listening to Irae Melanox, whenever I get around to it!

*Full disclosure: my all time favorite band/artist is Rush.

**Although the prominent bass work from Franco Avalli pretty consistently stands out as a highlight throughout.

***Best song title on the record, BTW.

****No, Google, I did not mean "Adramelech."  If I were searching for that particular Finnish band, don't you think I would have typed it that way even one of the last twenty times we went through this?