Band:
Antony Hämäläinen – Vocals, Lyrics
Marios Iliopoulos – Guitar, Music composition
Olof Mörck – Guitar, Music composition
Anders Hammer – Bass Guitar
Johan Nunez – Drums
Discography:
Sweet Vengeance (2003)
Descent into Chaos (2005)
A New Disease Is Born (2007)
Wearing a Martyr's Crown (2009)
Guests:
Tomas Lindberg - guest vocals on "Insidious", "Sham Piety", and "This World Is Coming To An End"
Gus G. – guitar solos on "Wrapped In Deceitful Dreams" and "Solar Corona"
Tom S. Englund - clean vocals on "Wrapped In Deceitful Dreams" and "Solar Corona"
Apollo Papathanasio - clean vocals on "Delirium Of The Fallen", "This World Is Coming To An End", and "Photograph"
Elias Holmlid - Strings and piano on "Delirium Of The Fallen"
John K - Orchestrations and keyboards on "Solar Eclipse" and "Emblem Of Light"
Info
Fredrik Nordström – Mixing, Mastering at Studio Fredman
Henrik Udd – Mixing, Editing at Studio Fredman
Ryan Butler - Vocal recordings at Arcane Digital Recordings
Terry Nikas - Drums, Guitar, Bass recordings at Zero Gravity Studios
Released 2011-09-26
Reviewed 2011-09-15
Links:
nightrage.com
myspace
last-fm
youtube
lifeforce
This is also the first time Nightrage release an album without changing any member since the last album and together with their guests the band has putted together 53 minutes of music spread on 15 tracks where three are dedicated as intro, outro and a prelude. Hence making it 50 minutes spread on 12 tracks, something I find as quite interesting on paper along with the news about returning members. But is it really that when all is considered? Well, here’s what I think:
This is melodic death metal. Technical and skillful musicians play the music, successful vocalists do the lyrical parts and the production is, as always when it comes from Studio Fredman, superb! Musically Nightrage can be found in a lake of fast guitars doing waves of harmonic patterns and melodies floating in to each other before reaching the shore. Antony Hämäläinen is the member of the band that’s doing the vocal parts ever since the last album and he scream and shout in song after song with the help of Tomas Lindberg, joined by Tom S. Englund and Apollo (Papathansio, not the Greek mythology god) on clear vocals in some of the songs. Generally the music is fast like a DTM car – not the fastest race car in the world, but still pretty fast compared to most cars. The vocals though makes no hurry, they have completely different melodies compared to the music and cruise around in their own tempo still fitting well with the rest. To speak in Adobe Photoshop language, the vocals are in another layer and each time Tom and Apollo joins in with their different song style it’s like changing the character style in to something else, to speak in Adobe InDesign language. I feel only Adobe Illustrator can really illustrate the diversity of this band, but I guess it’s variation and wealthiness – something that can save the day just as much as Adobe Acrobat Reader makes the articles at Hallowed.se look so good!
However, not all is well and what bothers me the most is probably the lack of songs that distinguish themselves from the rest. They are very varied inside the song, but almost all the songs are varied the same way and even though the songs have different tempo, melodies and are guested by different people they all sound like they were made with some sort of Nightrage standard sound. No song is bad but neither is there any song that is extra good and overall it’s evenly good without highs and lows. And what happens after a while with 50 minutes of evenly sounding, evenly good material without anything really distinguishing itself from the rest is that it gets a bit frustrating to hear. So also with ‘Insidious’. When all is considered it’s a bit repetitious. It’s like the thinking has gone the same way on all the songs and despite all the good ideas and good variation within the songs, it get stuck in a loophole with growls and screams, highly pitched guitars screaming out the notes and a flow that goes smooth and nice through the songs. Most of them flows fast and most of them have at least one part where the tempo is lowered or otherwise varied. I like it, but after about 35-40 minutes of it I feel it’s enough. The album needs at least one song somewhere in the middle throwing things around and turning the everything upside down!
When all is considered, I don’t feel too encouraged to put another seven on the album. Not even if we still used the ten grade score. It feels like an album doing what it’s supposed to do, it delivers what’s expected from it. But not much more. This is for all who likes melodic death metal. And to all you Nightrage fans it’s definitely something! But it doesn’t really raise the overall quality of music because in the end it’s pretty average.
HHHHHHH
