Although I don't think I've mentioned it on here before, I make no secret of the fact that I'm a total nerd for the Romans. It's pretty much my favourite subject and I've always wondered why Rome doesn't turn up in metal subject matter more often. Greek mythology is everywhere: Symphony X's The Odyssey, Iron Maiden's Flight of Icarus and Manowar's Achilles, Agony and Ecstasy to name but a few.
Which is why, when I first read about Ex Deo, it was with a certain amount of curiosity and anticipation - here was the possibility that someone might blend my favourite music, metal, with my favourite subject area, Rome.
The disappointment is thus crushing. They suck. They really suck, their music SUCKS. It doesn't sound any different to any other generic death metal-lite band that I don't want to hear. The guitars are muddy, the synth only goes further to destroying the guitar sound and the vocals are really, really fucking horrible. The solos are weirdly paced (too slow) and mis-placed (they just don't seem to fit in the right places) and the drums have some very strange tones. It's embarassing.
Not wanting to put a downer on the whole thing: lyrically, I think they're getting there. Apart from over-hyping the Battle of Actium (although I suppose that's what Augustus always wanted), they get some nice lines in. Massive points for fitting "circumvallation" into a song and including lyrics in Latin (now that's what I'm talking about!).
However, why stick to the obvious stuff? I know Julius Caesar is famous, but wouldn't Hannibal and Scipio make for more brutal subject matter? Or the Aeneid for some extreme epic? Or the achievements of Pompey, Vespasian or Trajan? Of Marius or Sulla? There's more to Rome than Antony and Cleopatra, believe it or not.
J will probably say I'm being too high brow about it. But it seems to me that if you're going so far as to make a Rome-themed metal band, you should do it properly and do it justice.
You might notice that the Metal Archives review is a great deal more generous towards this band than I. If you look at the reviewer profile however, he's blatantly a twat. His notion that "In the middle ages and during the reign of the Roman Empire, if you lived in Northern Europe and wore long hair, you were a free man, if you had short hair, you were a slave." isn't really true at all. This was the case for early Greek civilisations, but by the 6th or 5th century BC shorter styles were more common.
Even in Classical Greece, "long" wasn't even that long: just look at all the statues of Apollo, Herakles and Zeus. To be honest, whether you had a beard or not was considered much more important.
In the Roman Empire, short hair was particularly favoured - especially in the style popularised by Augustus. Through the middle ages, it really depended on exactly which part of Northern Europe you lived in and on what religion you adhered to.
So bollocks to him and his shitty review :D
