Beginning with an acoustic intro almost dead on to TESTAMENT’ ‘Trial By Fire’ from the album “The New Order” interlaced with female chanting, rasping ghoulish screams, polished lead guitar work, and borderline tribal drumming = 4:26 in total. I wasn’t exactly sure of what I was getting prepared to hear exactly from these Genovese Death / Thrashers. As this type of intro doesn’t exactly suit what these maniacs are known the world over for. And yet after such an exhaustive intro, the second track ‘Smell Of Blood’ starts off with more of the same SEPULTURA tribal-ish drums and then dives head first into a kind of “Chaos A.D.” meets ” M16 ” type of mix. Even the vocals of Marcelo Santos i.e. Flegias, (the current drummer of CADAVERIA and ex-vocalist of OPERA IX), his mic duty here is so close to a mimicry of Angelripper in this particular song it’s almost beyond identity theft! Next up is a real hard, horse sized, pill to swallow called ‘Party At Tirquoviste’. Over five minutes of slow, melodic meandering that evolves later into some sort of free Jazz drum inspired noise that solely focuses itself around a single boring metallic riff – the marsh mellow textured foundation, if you will, of this number that just goes ultimately nowhere in the end. Add a 1990s styled chunky bass break while this piece continues to play on and couple that with Pete Steele / Munster family-esque type spoken vocal lines that obviously were intended to be these Italians version of how Dracula would speak if he were alive, made to haunt or to send chills up your spine when you heard him yet in reality they just made me cringe in disgust. This concept album based loosely on the life and times of good old Vlad, is in effect truly bizarre. I mean, I would expect this poor of a level of songwriting and overall lameness from a lesser Italian Metal band like HOMICIDE, anyone out there remember these guys? Or freakin’ SCARECROW or something like that, but NECRODEATH?! C’mon! Ugh! Unrelenting in shit would be the proper quote to affix to this record as a publicity tag, as this CD just gets worse with each passing track. It isn’t until song # 4 begins that this album finally gets the kick in the ass it needs, for like a minute and a half! The inclusion of ‘Fragments Of Insanity’ the 1989 sophomore album / title track, dropped right in the midst of this conceptual record makes about as much sense as it does to cleanse the palette. Like a blood heavy drink, before taking you back to the steaming shit feast that sits on a plate before you. Track # 5 might as well have been written by KORN, and don’t ask why I know this, but this could of easily of been penned by those Nu-Metal fags. Track # 6 should have been the plausible and possible saving grace of the album, a rendition of VENOM’s aged classic ‘Countess Bathory’ yet in this forum and with the lack of sincerity played, this song just seems like too far a reach for this band. Uninspired, weak and that reeks of cliché as it ponders and plods on aimlessly. Track # 7 invokes “Grin” era CORONER with the inclusion of an aboriginal dingeridoo over more ATHEIST styled Jazz accompaniments. I tell you…I am absolutely confounded about this LP. It truly is one horror after another! Track # 8 is more of the same half-baked Thrash, minus track # 4, that permeates through this record and that is just as abysmally written as it performed. Track # 9 the quote unquote outro to this album is like a song stolen from the cutting room floor of a recent Madonna session! Not only that but it also takes up to 6:28 minutes to finally get to the point! Where honestly if either the band or the engineer had any sense they would of pulled this idea altogether or sheared it clean off at a minute flat however this is not the case and this tune just keeps going on, and on, and on, and on, and fucking on! In summary – “Draculea” is a heartbreaker. Unworthy of your attention, unworthy of your money and without a doubt the worst piece of audio shit NECRODEATH have made thus far! Even to say surpassing 2003’s sound track to a bi-polar meltdown – “Ton(e)s Of Hate”. Buyer beware! Contact: www.necrodeath.net or www.myspace.com/necrodeath100x100 or www.scarletrecords.it