NIGHTMARE — The Aftermath (review)

Album · 2014 · Power Metal

3.5/5 · 2014-06-12
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The Aftermath (2014) is the ninth full-length album by French heavy/power metal act Nightmare. This has been quite the anticipated release for me as Nightmare have created quite the run of high quality power metal records in the last decade (their history goes back even further to 1979), many of which present a different vibe to their music such as progressive power metal on The Dominion Gate (2005) and the just as impressive more straight up power metal album Genetic Disorder (2007), which was then followed by the heavy power metal album Insurrection (2009). For their previous album to The Aftermath, The Burden of God (2012), Nightmare played heavy power metal again, but within a symphonic influenced context, which they'd used before, but dropped on their last couple of records.

Unlike their last few releases, The Aftermath is more or less on the same page as The Burden of God in terms of the elements going into it, but with perhaps a slightly higher focus on the heavy metal side of the band although there are still significant power metal elements too so it's not wrong to still call this music heavy power metal. There are still some symphonic elements but they are quite drastically toned down compared to those found on The Burden of God. Toned down being the most apt term to describe The Aftermath; it generally feels like a much lesser version of its predessor. There are some good songs to be had, especially during the first half of the album where there are ones such as Bringers of a No Man's Land, Forbidden Tribe and Necromancer but during the second half things sound decidedly weaker and overall the album feels very below the standard I've become used to hearing from Nightmare since the release of Silent Room (2003).

Sadly the band have fallen into what I consider a cliché trap of modern heavy/power metal, namely adding some growls to a couple of the songs (performed by David Boutarin of For Many Reasons and The Seven Gates), which feel really unnecessary on an album like this. Nightmare have used growls in their music before to be fair, The Dominion Gate had Sander Gommans (ex-After Forever, HDK) as a guest, but what worked in that album's progressive context seems not only out of place on The Aftermath but there's also the simple problem that the growls just aren't that good. On Digital DNA they're passable I guess, but during their more prominent use during Ghost in the Mirror they actually manage to butcher what is otherwise a promising Nightmare song. Digital DNA though is actually the weaker song to me ears, but together this back to back pairing represents the worst that The Aftermath has to offer and after they're done it feels like what momentum the album previously had has been lost.

More positively Nightmare still deliver more good songs than poor ones and singer Jo Amore never fails to impress with his Dio-like voice. Because of these things The Aftermath is still a good album despite its issues, but is easily the group's weakest album in some time, perhaps even their weakest ever; I've never been able to get into Cosmovision (2001) to the same level as anything released after it but it's been so long since I gave that album another chance that I wouldn't really care to call if The Aftermath is any weaker or not. I guess on a personal level I still prefer this album to the band's early heavy metal albums released in the mid 80's, each with different singers (Jo Amore was the drummer at that time). Both of those albums are solid enough for the time but nowhere near the quality of the majority of their work since reforming. My rating is therefore to be taken in context of the albums released since the band's reformation which has resulted in at least five albums where Nightmare proves that they can do better than they have on The Aftermath. A rating within the 3.5 stars area is all I can fairly give this one. In short: a very disappointing offering from a usually killer power metal band.

73/100

(Originally written for Heavy Metal Haven: http://metaltube.freeforums.org/nightmare-the-aftermath-t3548.html)