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September 7, 2008 |
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01. Being Nothing
02. Phantasma
03. Poems
04. Descent Into Chaos
05. Frozen
06. Drug
07. Silent Solitude
08. Omen
09. Release
10. Solus (Instrumental)
11. Jubilant Cry
12. Reality Vs. Truth
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Hey there loyal METALEATER readers. Here we are again, with yet another disc from another band awaiting judgement (Evil laughter ensues!). This time I'm going to try a slightly different approach, so please bear with me as I begin this piece with something of a topical digression before getting to the meat of the review (w/apologies to both NIGHTRAGE and Century Media for the rampant literary self-indulgence about to ensue).
Y'see, this is as good a review as any to use as a springboard to discuss several issues that have been on my mind of late regarding the nebulous and subjective affair that is 'reviewing' CDs as a whole. More and more I find the whole process of analyzing, dissecting, and disseminating upon what are, quite literally dozens and dozens of acts that arrive upon my desk to be a task of monumentally Promethian proportions. Really. No exaggeration. Like...how many times can I re-use and re-work the same adjectives and superlatives in convincing our readers of why such and such an act is 'awesome', or 'amazing', or even 'heinously awful' for that matter before it all becomes so painfully predictable and clichéd that you don't even need to read beyond the first paragraph to figure out whether or not I'm going to give a particular disc the proverbial 'thumbs up' or 'thumbs down'!?! Back in the day, when there were probably at best, a half dozen or so Metal releases every couple'a' months,
it was easier for both the listening audience and the professional Metal writer alike to form and express what were arguably more objective and concise opinions on the quality of an album. Back then you knew that 10/10 meant just that...10/10. Nowadays it often seems as though everything is a '10' to some writers. And how can you trust that!?! Conversely, these days I don't think it is unreasonable to wager that between fifty to a hundred new Metal releases hit the shelves every month, to the point where the sheer amount of available choices leave a punter feeling both overwhelmed and, to a great degree...jaded and disinterested. Sad but true.
Take the sophomore release from Sweden's NIGHTRAGE (Gus G./guitars, Henric Carlsson/bass, Tomas Lindberg/vox, Marios Iliopoulos/guitars, and Fotis Bernardo/drums) as an example; when these guys came out about two years ago with their debut release 'Sweet Vengeance' I was 'Wowed!'. The first half of the album was a masterwork of emotive, stirring aggression and melody matched by few at the time. It didn't matter a damn that the second half literally all sounded exactly the same...so overwhelmingly kick-ass was the band's opening salvo. For me at least, 'Sweet Vengeance' raised the bar for the rest of the NWOSDM pack.
Well, now the sequel has arrived in the form of 'Descent Into Chaos'. And again, to reiterate my earlier points...what can I possibly say about this album that will be of any constructive use to the discerning reader out there in headphone-land that I haven't already uttered in the case of countless similar acts? I fear I am - as I described earlier - in a state of both 'overwhelmed', yet simultaneously, seriously 'underwhelmed' all at once. I mean, in and of themselves NIGHTRAGE are a great band, and as one can imagine 'Descent Into Chaos' is a pretty damned good album. It picks up more or less where 'Sweet Vengeance' left off and offers up the kind of killer, riffy, high-octane Melodic Swedish DM we now expect from Tomppa irregardless of which of his many band incarnations (the man is prolific to the point of it being something of an insider joke in the Swedish Metal scene) happens to be on the table. And truly that's it.
This is a really good NWOSDM album. Nothing more, nothing less. One of about fifty similiar-sounding, similiar-calibre acts also currently available. Yeah, yeah...I know what you're all thinking: 'Boy...that's a pretty frikkin' backhanded compliment to the band, man. It's such an anticlimactic review that it's almost like you don't even care.' Well, you're right and you're wrong. You're right that the review - despite being on the positive side - does smack of anticlimax, yes...but you're dead wrong to think that I no longer care or have any passion for this music. And that, my friends is precisely the point I'm trying to make here. I DO care. I want to be able to keep this interesting and fresh, and vital. The thing is though, I'm just a middleman. A hack. I just review this stuff, I don't create it. In order for it to continue being interesting for me (and my key-tapping ilk) however, I need the artists to likewise love the music enough to keep it interesting, fresh, and vital.
In the case of NIGHTRAGE I see a band with infinite potential for 'Greatness' merely putting out something 'Damned good'. For some reason, with a group as talented as I know they are, 'Damned good' just doesn't seem quite good enough. Maybe I'm being pedantic here. Maybe I'm expecting too much. The thing is though, I genuinely do love Heavy Metal and feel we are reaching a crossroads within the genre's development wherein sheer quantity is starting to outweigh quality. If this goes too far, how then will Metal be any different to the Pop, Mainstream Rock, Rap, and Hip-Hop we all so smugly deride as being mass-produced, formulaic, and packaged for mass consumption? Something to think about.
In the meantime, if you want to hear some 'Damned good' Melodic Swedish DM, you can do a lot worse than to tune in to NIGHTRAGE's 'Descent Into Chaos'. Easily deserving of a solid and unwavering '8' on my personal Metalometer, it will surely please those who crave this sort of fare. I like it a lot. I just wish I loved it...y'know what I mean? I feel like a professor who has just been handed a perfectly competent paper by a student with a capacity for genius. NIGHTRAGE are a band whom I can only hope have their sights set on some sort of MAIDENesque longevity as opposed to the slippery slope of let's-release-a-couple-of-albums-and-move-on-to-something-else-that-will-sell... 'cause man, like I said, I really do love this music and I think it deserves better than that. Let's all work together to keep raising that bar, okay? Hails!
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