Artist: Sinner
Label: Nuclear Blast
Release: 1998
Runtime: 56:16
Rating: 5/5
One of the more important albums to come out while melodic elements were making a comeback in heavy metal in the second half of the nineties is without a doubt the heaviest record of the career of the legendary German heavy rock / heavy metal outfit Sinner, “Nature Of Evil”. Its predecessor, 1996’s “Judgement Day”, had already hinted that the band’s further development was heading into harder metal waters.
The revival of melodic elements in metal in the mid-nineties happened first in Germany and Scandinavia, and ultimately resulted in the boom of power metal. “Nature Of Evil” is a typical representative of the German approach to heavy metal. Band boss Mat Sinner clearly had a craving for an ultra-metallized, raw and lively sound at this point. To that end he started Primal Fear almost simultaneously, and they simply took the sound of “Nature Of Evil” and carried it over to their self-titled debut, released the same year as “Nature Of Evil”. “Nature Of Evil” is also the moment of greatest similarity with future Primal Fear creations, because on the albums that followed, Mat Sinner began to “soften” the sound again in favor of direct rock energy.
“Nature Of Evil” is an album with serious spirit. The title alone tells you pretty much the whole point. It’s tense, it’s dark, it sounds downright wicked and, at its core, unbelievably possessed! At the same time, it pulls off an incredible balancing act, fusing melody with raw, live, cranked-up production and aggressive touches. The special charm of Sinner’s music is, of course, Mat Sinner’s vocal: manly, pitched low to mid-range, and recognizable from a mile away. This time Mat at moments literally roars in those registers, which ramps up the extreme tension of the dramatic atmosphere and underlines the message of the verses, which hint at playing with the devil and the temptation of him, set against the reality of an individual’s life. Throughout, the lyrics stay thoroughly down-to-earth, direct and realistic, so with the aggressive riff embrace and the tightly wound snare they work brilliantly, and the messages hit the listener even harder. The guys often decorate their venomous, lively riffing with witty harmonized thirds, which on the album at times turn into breakneck, sped-up picking, the trademark of classic old-school German tradition. This element is integrated optimally into the album as a whole. It provides the album’s very dynamic ebb and flow and the occasional unpredictability of the transitional twists between the lead motifs of individual songs.
Mat Sinner assembled an outstanding crew of workers for this album. With a clear goal in mind for the creation of “Nature Of Evil”, his orders were carried out superbly by the guitar duo of Tom Naumann / Alex Beyrodt, who unleashed some seriously inspired solos in multi-part sequences, by seasoned and experienced drum master Fritz Randow (Eloy, Victory, Saxon), with his brilliant integration of double bass drum pedals and witty transitional explosiveness, and by Frank Roessler on keyboards, who puts the dot on the “i” more than on any other Sinner album. The sinister keyboard overture in the album’s mini epics, such as Question Of Honnor or the title track, as well as, for example, the emphasis on the ticking rhythm of the last hour of reality for a wretch being led to the electric chair in the fast-paced Walk On The Darkside, after the prelude Rising, are the triumphant moments of the album that leave it with a special stamp.
The album has an incredible variety in the construction of its songs. There are the maximally sped-up Some Truth (Has Better Lef Unknown) and Trust No One. Mat must have been seriously, extremely angry when he wrote the verses for those two breakneck, rage-filled bashers. Dark Soul is another interesting one, the only moment on the record that openly points to Sinner’s rock roots, even though here too the basic motif is disguised in possessed, raw, live sound production. The album hits the listener with uncompromising fury right away with the deadly Devil’s River, where you literally drown in the avalanche-like riff dictatorship of the opener. The especially standout moments are the mini epic poems Question Of Honnor and (especially) the title track Nature Of Evil, which, with the perfection of its composition, is the most beautiful moment of the album all by itself. Heading into the finish, this white-hot album, which keeps the listener in a state of uncertain, high anticipation and with its intense tension and dramatic moments keeps them pinned between the hammer and the anvil, brilliantly lets go in the closing Thin Lizzy cover The Sun Goes Down.
“Nature Of Evil” is the album that cemented the first stage of a new epic chapter of power metal, which brought heavy metal fresh relevance at the end of the nineties. Given its characteristics, “Nature Of Evil” holds a special place in the Sinner discography. It’s the moment where Mat Sinner managed to merge aggression and melody into a gorgeous blend of metal uncompromisingness, something Sinner never repeated with this approach later on. Add the specifics of Mat Sinner’s musical vocabulary and you’ve got an album that is an evergreen one-of-a-kind in its genre, and one that, after more than ten years, is firmly gaining the status of a heavy metal classic. It’s an album where every single spin in the player never stops thrilling, which earns it the noble title of timeless work of art.
Lineup
Mat Sinner – vocals, bass guitar
Tom Naumann – guitar
Alex Beyrodt – guitar
Frank Roessler – keyboards
Fritz Randow – drums
Production
Mat Sinner
Track list
1. Devil’s River (5:20)
2. A Question Of Honour (7:15)
3. Justice From Hell (4:52)
4. The Nature Of Evil (7:32)
5. Some Truth (3:58)
6. Darksoul (7:20)
7. Faith And Conviction (3:40)
8. Rising (2:25)
9. Walk On The Darkside (4:31)
10. Trust No One (3:08)
11. The Sun Goes Down (6:11)
