• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5

Unum is the third album from Italy's Vexillum and if nothing has a better title than 2012's The Bivouac. With a band hailing from Italy and playing Power Metal your natural instinct would be to assume this is some kind of Symphonic stuff and that is true to a certain extent though Vexillum peppers Unum with a lot of Folk elements, more than I recall from The Bivouac. There are lots of tavern-worthy choruses, flutes and strings and melodies that sound somewhere between the Renaissance and pirate drinking songs. The energy level on Unum is higher than its predecessor but the songwriting is not nearly as good. The band doesn't combine Power and Folk in any new or creative way and most of the riffs sound recycled but the real issue with Unum are the vocal lines. Many sound only marginally related to the songs they are in and not even the plethora of guest vocalists (Freedom Call's Chris Bay, Blind Guardian's Hansi Kursch, ex-Visions of Atlantis singer Maxi Nil, etc.) can set them right.

Vexillum's style is one that I usually enjoy but Unum sounds jumbled and cobbled together and has some of the poorest flow I've heard in a long time. Closing with a cover of Slade's already annoying "Run Runaway" and making it even more annoying by changing the arrangement doesn't help. There's too much stuff in this vein out there that is better to waste much time with Unum.