Artist: Nightrage
Label: Century Media
Released: 2010
Runtime: 95:42
Rating: 4.5/5
If the mere mention of Swedish metal floods your mouth with drool and fills you with a giddy sense of anticipation, then it’s time to celebrate, to revel, and to toast fresh empirical proof that burns Sweden into your heart in letters of gold, and makes the commandment “there’s nothing better than the Gothenburg sound” louder than any second-rate idolatry of false prophets, rhythms and screaming! Fascinating, listenable, packed with talent and musical vision: those are just the words we can use to roughly sketch the scale of the Greek-Swedish metalsmiths Nightrage. A band that has thoroughly rewired its basic circuitry over the years and, in a completely changed lineup, has been chasing the high standards of musical excellence since 2003. Back then the band was made up of The Haunted’s phenomenal drummer Per Möller Jensen, bassist Brice Leclercq, At The Gates legend and frontman Tomas Lindberg, Firewind alumnus and Ozzy Osbourne’s sidekick sharpshooter, the gifted guitarist Gus G, and the father of the project, guitarist Marios Iliopoulos. There are more than enough reasons to give it your full attention. And it was exactly that raw, excellent era of perfect chemistry that spawned two truly outstanding records from this international crew, the albums Sweet Vengeance and Descent Into Chaos, which now land in your lap freshened up, improved and technically polished in the form of a compilation tribute titled Vengeance Descending!
The album Sweet Vengeance, the first half of this rich musical harvest, captures a period of top-tier technical mastery and raw, honest drive in full glory. The main axis of the brutal, brilliantly polished cataclysmic sound was woven from Greek precision and Marios’s talent, devotion and pure faith, plus the surgically precise Swedish rage of the standard-bearers of authentic Gothenburg melody. Marios left Greece back then to chase his dreams, and in those pioneering days of itching to break through he slogged away as a restaurant cleaner while craving a killer mix of music and unruly originality. Honesty, dedication to the highest goals of musical perfection, fun and total creative hedonism paint a visionary landscape of pure ideas, and the beast is intelligent and emotionally full! The opening ambush of the unprepared, The Tremor, is just the overture to an infernal dance of moving images and relentless musical pressure on your senses. The tempo of total destruction keeps ramping up, and the rich textures of guitars, at times even a bit kitschy, become part of your cerebral wiring for catchiness. The revelation of the blood-glowing vaults of hell and visions of heaven is woven through vignettes like Gloomy Daydream, the outstanding Ethereal, Circle Of Pain, the wonderfully ominous steel guitar stampede At The Ends Of The Earth, and the softer acoustic contours of The Howls Of The Wolves. That last one recalls the voluptuous moments of Pantera’s take on Planet Caravan. If this first era was full of passion, anger, sorrow and pain, and Marios was above all exorcising the demons and ghosts of his past, you have to admit that Sweet Vengeance is without doubt one of the best albums in the death metal genre. Alongside the sharp rhetoric of death metal, there’s no shortage of quality melody, singable solos, guitar airdrops and a duality of brutality and softness, and what you hear ties in, ideologically and aesthetically, quite naturally with the milestone of melodic death metal, the record Slaughter Of The Soul, even though that one was forged from the fingers and the soul essence of the immortal despots of metal’s Swedish epicenter Gothenburg, the band At The Gates. The original sacred text of melodic death metal gets upgraded here with an unjustly overlooked, brilliant gospel of somewhat more recent vintage. As the cherry on top, you also get the Japanese version of Gloomy Daydreams, with a touch of oriental extra value and perfectionism.
The follow-up is even sharper! If the first part was Dr. Jekyll, now the demonically murderous Mr. Hyde sinks his teeth into you. Descent Into Chaos is more focused, more concentrated and above all immensely more aggressive and destructive than its predecessor. At times you get the feeling you’re being taught a lesson in sonically enriched HC, and the brutal complement to Sweet Vengeance, with its ultra-fast drum passages and somewhat darker melody, forged the foundation of what Nightrage wholeheartedly stand for today. A slightly more thrashy approach, shorter song titles, and above all the dirty, cheeky, beefed-up production by Fredrik Nordstöm wake the sleeping beast and breathe a second, louder life into it. The guitar sound is thicker, and the drums boom naturally and juicily full, and what you hear really forms the basis for understanding decent death metal, production and master craftsmanship. There are barely any backing vocals this time, and the wall of dense, devastating frontal sonic assault flattens everything in its path. There’s plenty of speed, but no shortage of melodic softening and slowing down either, and with Solus the guys of the new-era lineup also return to instrumental epics. Instead of bare, slow acoustics, this time they reach for harder-hitting, epic patterns of a progressively set-up attack, and after a moment of sappiness comes the time for the final reckoning with Jubilant Cry and the technically enhanced finale of the superb Reality Versus Truth. Two extra tracks make sure it’s not all just copying and selling what’s already been sold. The Japanese bonus on the album, Black Skies , and the somewhat drawn-out and, let’s be honest, exhausting-sounding bonus Gallant Deeds, on which the sugary-sounding singer Mikael Stanne, vocalist of Dark Tranquility, a band well known to Slovenian audiences, tries to drown out the metal god Tomas Lindberg. A matter of taste, but either way you’ve made it to the very end of a pretty rich and varied musical feast that, despite everything, doesn’t stick in your throat for a second or stir up needless regret that you reached for this combined twin pack.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ln6Uic0_1ME
You could assume this is just an attempt to squeeze your so orphaned, recession-emptied wallet. Maybe so, but this time for the price of one you get two albums, a document of a time that was a small step for these musicians and a huge one for metal, and that deserves at least a moment of your time and at least a pinch of curiosity. Either way, the product is above standard and worth every hard-earned euro and every second of your time, which you’d otherwise spend numbed out, plugged into the World Wide Web, or just obediently spinning in the gears of a world and an age in which time is gold. Still, don’t forget there’s always room in life for a little joy, some good (or outstanding) music and a few small sweet sins! Nightrage can be a really good starting point for that, or just the right soundtrack for such pursuits!
This review was written in collaboration between Rock Hard Slovenija and RockLine.
Lineup
Sweet Vengeance:
Tomas Lindberg – vocals
Marios Iliopoulos – rhythm, lead & acoustic guitar
Gus G. – lead guitar
Brice Leclerq – bass
Per Möller Jensen – drums
Descent Into Chaos:
Tomas Lindberg – vocals
Marios Iliopoulos – rhythm, lead & acoustic guitar
Gus G. – lead guitar
Henric Karlsson – bass
Fotis Benardo – drums
Guest musicians:
– Tom S. Englund – clean vocals
– Fredrik Nordström – keyboards
– Patrik J. Sten – lead guitar on Phantasma, Frozen, backing vocals, samples
– Mikael Stanne – clean vocals on Frozen and vocals on Gallant Deeds
Production
Fredrik Nordström & Nightrage
Tracklist
CD1: “Sweet Vengeance”
1. The Tremor
2. The Glow of the Setting Sun
3. Hero
4. Elusive Emotion
5. Gloomy Daydreams
6. Macabre Apparition
7. In My Heart
8. Ethereal
9. Circle Of Pain
10. At The Ends Of The Earth
11. The Howls Of The Wolves
12. Gloomy Daydreams (Extended Demo Version) *
* Japanese bonus track of “Sweet Vengeance”
TOTAL: 47:10
CD2: “Descent into Chaos”
1. Being Nothing
2. Phantasma
3. Poems
4. Descent into Chaos
5. Frozen
6. Drug
7. Silent Solitude
8. Omen
9. Release
10. Solus
11. Jubilant Cry
12. Reality Vs. Truth
13. Black Skies *
14. Gallant Deeds **
* Japanese bonus track of “Descent Into Chaos”
** Previously unreleased, feat. Mikael Stanne
TOTAL: 48:32
