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Wearing a Martyr's Crown |
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Metal team UK
I appear to have somehow missed the last Nightrage album but really enjoyed their first couple. Since they released the last one I heard ‘Descent Into Chaos’ in 2005 that appears to be exactly what has happened as far as the group’s line up is concerned. The only remaining and indeed founding member is guitarist Marios Iliopoulos, everyone else is new. In fact looking back at the ever revolving line up they are now on singer number four (Tomas Lindberg was of course the first) and drummer number 6, which is all a bit Spinal Tap although I cannot find out if any of the previous sticksmen actually exploded. During their history some very notable names apart from Tompa have come and gone, Gus G (Firewind, Dream Evil) Nick Barker (drummer for hire) and Bruce Leclercq (Dissection) amongst them. Now looking at the group we have a relatively unknown singer Antony Hämäläinen and instrumentalists from Greece, Belgium and Sweden, none of them from household band names. Although it would be expected with all that upheaval, not a huge amount has actually changed.
This is one fast and ferocious rip-rolling shredder of an album basically and if you love that Gothenburg crunch you are going to be in seventh heaven almost as soon as opener ‘Shed The Blood’ does just that and cleaves away hell for leather. Sure the vocals may not be quite as great as if Tompa had been behind the mic but Antony has a pretty good roar about him and as for the musicianship this ones impossible not to bang your head along to. It’s also rather difficult not to draw comparisons to a certain other band here and if the group had a rather nice looking German female singer they would possibly have found themselves propelled into the big league. Still without any such distractions to get the popular music press frothing they are left with the music to do the talking and with the 11 songs here and not an ounce of filler that’s exactly what they do.
There are many elements to really enjoy about this album. ‘A Grim Struggle’ has the riff play and sort of melody one would find in a particularly good Dark Tranquillity number, it also has a nice acoustic mid section that has you deliriously playing air guitar along to. In fact they like putting these sorts of sections in to numbers, the previous one ‘Collision Of Fate’ had ended with almost a flamenco flourish after raging away for almost five minutes. The songs are all around this length, well thought out and structured with plenty of depth about them to get you immersed within. A quieter bit with spoken word section on the title track has a bit of In Flames about it, thankfully this lot are not wimping out in the slightest and the gruff vocals are quick to bite back in around the ever harmonic guitars. ‘Abandon’ sees the biggest likeness to the previously hinted at Arch Enemy, it’s seriously as good as the likes of ‘Dead Eyes’ or ‘Ravenous’ and has killer hooks and chorus. So if you love the sound of crushing Swedish melodic riffs and great strong songs you simply cannot go wrong here at all and I’m digging out the old albums straight away.
Pete Woods |
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