Description
Tracks 01. Death of Neira 02. The Senior Lover of Diamanda 03. I Am Jesus 04. A Pale Crescendo of Diamond Suns 05. Luciferin (What if Men Could Bear Masters?) 06. Muscat (Darkdark Road) 07. The Poor Us 08. I’ve Never Dreamt the Life We Share 09. Treasures in Aramaic Tears (Echelon) 10. Semana Tragica 11. Nightfall
2003 album. Nightfall are hard to put into a particularly category. At times, they sound like a melodic metal act while at others they are almost symphonic black metal. What it boils down to is that Nightfall create the same rich melodies that have become the institution of Sweden, but with a despondent feeling to them that is more noticeably Greek. They lack the upbeat, bordering on happy and catchy sound that many melodic metal acts put into their radio friendly albums these days. They also tend to play at a slower tempo and create groovy rhythms as captivating as the lead melodies themselves. The vocals are guttural throughout most of “”I Am Jesus””, but the voice takes on so many different faces that it is almost another instrument.What keeps Nightfall from falling into the abyss of boring melodic metal is their total disregard to all of the typical rules and customs which many of these bands live and die by. Nightfall are in a class by themselves
I Am Jesus is the sixth studio album by the Greek metal band Nightfall, released in 2003 by Black Lotus. The songs were mostly written and arranged by the bass guitarist/vocalist Efthimis Karadimas, with the exception of four songs, which were co-written with the guitarist Mike Galiatsos, who left the band during the time of their last album, Diva Futura (1999).
All songs written By Efthimis Karadimas, except where noted.
- “Death of Neira” 4:32
- “The Senior Lover of Diamanda” 4:28
- “I Am Jesus” (Karadimas, Mike Galiatsos) 3:34
- “A Pale Crescendo of Diamond Suns” 3:38
- “Luciferin (What if Men Could Bear Masters?)” 6:02
- “Muscat (Darkdark Road)” 3:30
- “The Poor Us” (Karadimas, Galiatsos) 3:06
- “I’ve Never Dreamt the Life We Share” (Karadimas, Galiatsos) 5:14
- “Treasures in Aramaic Tears (Echelon)” 5:49
- “Semana Tragica” (Karadimas, Galiatsos) 6:35
- “Nightfall” 5:39
- Efthimis Karadimas: bass guitar, vocals
- George Bokos: lead and rhythm guitars
- Bob Katsionis: lead and rhythm guitars
- George Kollias: drums, percussion
this new opus is to me their best effort to date. Indeed I Am Jesus has everything to become quite a successful album. The music is very entertaining and quite diverse to keep the audience’s interest for more than the first couple of songs contrary to some of the previous albums the band has delivered. This is probably due to the fact that the band went through an almost complete line-up change except for its mainman, bass player and vocalist Efthimis Karadimas who has been on board since the beginning of the Nightfall adventure. Their mesmerizing symphonic dark metal tainted with keyboards and haunting atmosphere isn’t innovative at all, but succeed in refreshing the style, and features a bunch of catchy melodic songs. In fact, typical dark metal bands such as Dark, Aeon or Crematory never raised more than a passing interest in me, mainly due to the fact that they navigate in between different metal trends such as heavy, gothic, death even black metal. However, some bands such as Eternal Tears Of Sorrow, Alastis or Evereve once succeeded to give dark metal its definitive letters of nobility. Nightfall were not among them, but now with I Am Jesus they managed to enter the limited circle of interesting dark metal bands.
One very cool thing about this gig is that I have been exposed to more types of metal in the last three weeks than I had in the previous three years. I mean, the odds of my stumbling across a Nightfall before this were slim, at best. A Greek Black Melodic Chuggah Chunk and Keyboard…band…thing, Nightfall does the kind of power chord happy metal that makes me wish I still had an espophogas so I could tip a few. This is not complex music for complex people, but it’s also not boring or ametuerish by any stretch. Instead of going batshit with the riffs, the band prefers the almighty power chord, and frankly it’s a style that gets them where they want to be. The disc starts off strong with “Death of Niera”, a mid tempo headbanger with some killer drum work. The production is very good and really puts you in the music. The singer’s voice is about what you would expect with “black metal” style, sort of scratchy, four-days-with-a-cough, and his cadence compliments the songs most of the time. The guitars are not overly enormous sounding, but not thin sounding either. The bass is normally happy to keep its heel on the root note, but occasionally cuts loose and shines. The drummer is very good, not ostentatious but lively. This group sounds like musicians who know they can play and are more interested in what the song sounds like than what other musicians will say about them later. “A Pale Crescendo of Diamond Suns” is a strange little number, with spoken word parts that sound like they are leading you into a long and tedious “epic”. But the band plays it smart and lets the idea run its course, then moves on. This made me smile – they got me. The next song, “Luciferin (What if Men Could Bear Masters?)” is a whispered lyric over a running little bass line that ends up with huge power chorus…sometimes the band toes the cheese line – sometimes they step over it just a scoatch. “I’m Freaking Out…I am Freaking out…” thus speaks vocalist Efthimis Karadimas. I just don’t expect to hear a greek black metal singer using bad 70’s jargon in that accent and voice. Ever wish people had to record in their native tongues when they made albums? Epics seem to be the goal of the latter half of the record. I sense a passing similarity with Dimmu Borgir at times, but these guys stick to the mid paced tempos and chords. I have to admit my attention waned as the record moved on. Whereas the first few tracks were keeping me interested from beginning to end, after a time the cuts all started to lose me. Not to the degree that I lost interest entirely, or wanted to listen to something else, but the level of intensity in the experience did drop. And whatever they are doing in the loooong ending of “I’ve never dreamt the life we share” could, perhaps, have ended a few dozen measures earlier to better effect. Bottom line: This is a good record, and I would recommend it to anyone who likes somewhat basic but nevertheless moving and thoughtful music. It’s not the best thing I have heard, and it’s not really my style (as far as I know – the more I am exposed to different styles, the less I can say this), but it kept me with it from beginning to end. It’s well produced, well performed, just offbeat enough to entertain, but still familiar in a lot of ways. I will definitely listen to this again.
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.