Rod Sacred

"Rod Sacred" - that sounds like a typical rare-private-pressing sort of band, doesn't it? The kind eBay'ers radomly regurgitates in their listings to maximize search-hits. Sleeve's pretty cool I guess. A bit on the comic-book side of things, but nice enough. Is it daddy Satan on his mighty throne or Drunk Frog-Man from the next Marvel movie franchise one wonders? Oh, and it's italian and therefor it cannot suck. Not too much anyway...
I think these + a fairly affordable price tag were the justifications that made me pick it up at the KIT Metal Market many years ago and since then I've played it exactly one (1) time. Was it that bad? Let's revisit and find out...

There's one obvious flaw that needs pointing out only after the first couple of songs: the vocal melodies sound too commercial for the otherwise decent riffing and song compositions. Frankly the icky chorus of that ever-so-important opening track "Don't Fear The Rain" is the weakest moment of the entire album (unfortunately this also proves to be the album's single claim to originality). Things do pick up a bit after this. "Lonly[sic] Between Mass Of Puppets" might be a song title invoking hopes for an unexpected turn towards the Italian Dark Sound a la Paul Chain or Black Hole but no, that is of course not the case. It's still a great, energetic melodic Metal tune and by now we can start dropping a few musical references: First and foremost they draw similarities to Scandinavian Metal bands like Alien Force, Mindless Sinner, Hiroshima and the likes, and there's moments where they go full-DIO in semi-ballads/epics like "The Mistery Of Quid" and "Dreaming". They also compensate their weak beginnings with the fast Judas Priest-ripper "Will Of Living" and thus ending on an up note saves them from the dreaded 'The Corroseum does not endorse...'-stamp. Now don't read that as a ravin', screamin', a-must-for-all recommendation, but if you enjoy fellow Italian mid-streamers like Skanner, Crying Steel, Elektradrive, RAF etc it's definitely worth checking out.