Nightrage – Insidious (2011)

Overlooking the fact that Olof Mörck from Amaranthe infamy plays guitar in this band, Nightrage’s fifth full-length album is actually a few steps up from their previous riff-tastic offering “Wearing a Martyr's Crown”. “Insidious” features 15 songs of very well crafted Melodic Death Metal in the Gothenburg style. However, what makes this release better than their previous albums is the guest appearances by Apollo Papathanasio of Firewind, Tomas Lindberg of At The Gates/ Lock Up, Gus G of Ozzy Osbourne/ Firewind, Tom S. Englund of Evergrey, and John K of Biomechanical, each of them providing something different to each of the songs they participate in.

After the traditional intro song, the album opens with solid riffing in the track “Delirium of the Fallen”. Here you can easily notice the similarities with the band’s earliest work, but when Apollo’s vocals kick in, the whole vibe of the song is very nicely changed and a very well crafted solo capitalizes this vocal change. On the album title track, the band goes for a typical drumming/guitar onslaught that made countless Swedish Melodic DM bands popular, but once again Tomas Lindberg’s guest appearance is what saves the day for this song.

The best songs of the album have to be “Wrapped in Deceitful Dreams” and “Solar Corona”, mainly because of the appearances of Gus G and Tom Englund. Both of them propel the band’s ‘average’ music to new heights thanks to Gus G’s solos and Tom’s soaring vocals. If you have noticed the pattern, most of the highlights of this release are the guest’s appearances and while we don’t say that Nightrage’s music is not good, we just think is too average by today’s standards.

There are plenty of skillful guitar sections in the ‘non-guest’ tracks like “Hate Turns Black”, “Cloaked in Wolf Skin”, “Utmost End of Pain”, “House of Night” and “Poisoned Pawn”, but they are just average in our opinion. However, the songs that have other musicians “Solar Corona” and “This World is coming to and End”, have that extra effort/element that makes them clearly standout from the rest of the songs and band’s out there. 

As we have stated through the review, Nightrage has good chops for making catchy Melodic Death Metal songs, and can surely deliver effective riffs, tight drumming and catchy section, but they are missing a little spark that would make them even better. This little spark is provided by the guest appearances; hence these are the best and most memorable songs in the release. If you like Melodic Death Metal and don’t mind a bit of sub par moments in exchange for several brilliant ones, you should definitely checkout this release and try to catch the band on tour this October through the USA.

Release: September 27th, 2011

Country: Greece/Sweden