Nekromant won me over. I initially felt inclined to dislike it, for reasons I’ll describe in a minute, but throughout their debut album, “The Nekromant Lives,” they persisted with the relentlessly likable, Traditional Heavy Metal tunes and melodies, especially on the latter half of the record, when they let their Iron Maiden worship fly free. I couldn’t deny that I was digging what I was hearing.

I was initially disposed to a negative reaction, because while the songs are enjoyable, they’re built of familiar, oft-used materials (riffs, patterns, melodies) from the past 5 decades. It feels like the debut of a young band, full of promise and reverence for their forebears, but “The Nekromant Lives” is second full-length from them under this name, and they’d also played for a few years as Serpent. They’re not rookies.
But as I said, limited originality aside, this is a thoroughly, undeniably enjoyable slice of New Wave of Traditional Heavy Metal for 2018. If you can’t find anything to appreciate in songs like, “The Nekromant Lives,” “Scorpio,” “Eye in the Sky,” and “We Want You Dead,” then this is probably not the genre of music for you. Sure, it’s all been done before, but Nekromant is not the same ol, same ol.