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Italian blackened thrashers Necrodeath don't show any signs of slowing down. In fact, they only seem be getting faster, angrier and meaner sounding the more they age. The Age of Dead Christ is the title of the band's 11th studio album, and this one shows them going back to their early, simpler sound, with a more varied performance.

Let me say first that Necrodeath have never made a bad album during their career. They don't let us down on this new 9-track effort and have maintained their bar of high quality material once again. What is also great about them is that they have managed to find their own sound over the years, without caring what the current, ongoing trends in the Metal genre are.

On The Age of Dead Christ, the band is firing on all cylinders in the one and only Necrodeath style. They still press on strongly in their pedal-to-metal approach. These true pioneers of Italian Thrash Metal have also realized the importance of keeping their songs varied enough, which also applies to the material on this record. I guess I have never heard of anything like the title track, "The Age of Dead Christ," from them before. It is a familiar type of song, kind of progressive, yet with a psychedelic Thrash style. Same goes with the opening song, "The Whore of Salem," which starts off with rage, but after a little while starts shedding more colors. And it does not end with those songs: "The Order of Baphomet," while being a nice thrasher by its own right, has a few welcome twists and turns out to be more than just one of those 'ordinary Necrodeath songs', with pretty unorthodox riffage and stuff going on in it. Or how about the Voïvod/Slayer-inspired "The Kings of Rome," which just screams to be liked.

This album is Necrodeath's most versatile-sounding record to date, thus it also deserves a fair amount of credit for its ambitious efforts to keep the musical spectrum so open for both long-time and casual listeners alike.