Ex Deo is a side project of the Montreal death metal band Kataklysm that’s all about Roman history and epic battles; basically Sabaton, except ancient times; Roman times that is. This is the third album under the Ex Deo name and shits pretty good. I first encountered Ex Deo from their second album Caligvla and I was immediately engrossed with their epic riffs, tight and technical compositions and appropriately brutal vocals; you can easily envision epic roman soldiers ruining shit in this album as well.
The cover art is pretty dope, like seriously what the fuck, war elephant? shitttttt I also really liked their previous album cover art as well. Not too sure if this is a painting with some photoshop for the Ex Deo text on the banner or if this was an original illustration commissioned by the band. Either way, it’s pretty different and very Renaissance looking shit, good shit. The title of this shit is pretty epic too “The Immortal Wars”; can’t get any more epic than that.
Consisting of 8 tracks total, 1 being a intermission kind of piece, all excellent songs. One of the key things that I like for new metal albums is a strong first track, “The Rise of Hannibal” is pretty solid death metal with background classical instrumentals setting the tone for the entire album. With each track the intensity and speed increases, accumulating in he last for 4 tracks being the heaviest, fastest and most epic shit on this thing. Not sure about my favorite song, probably either “Cato Major: Carthago delenda Est!” or “The Spoils of War” and “The Rise of Hannibal”. Excellent death metal with symphonic elements. Good shit.
Don’t really have anything else to say about this album. I thought that Ex Deo wasn’t ever going to release anything else ever again since the frontman of Kataklysm was afraid that this side project would get more popular than the main band so technically “disbanded” after the second album. After a few years they decided to do more shit for Ex Deo and here we are, with The Immortal War. Good shit. Sadly the dude was kinda right, while I have listened to most of Kataklysm’s shit, overall I like Ex Deo so much more and to me is just way more polished and refined. Maybe it’s just a epic war roman history theme that I like. Maybe.
Score: 9