Description

The two first Nightrage albums on one double cd set with three bonus tracks

Sweet Vengeance – 2003
Hmm…must be something in the Swedish drinking water that gives these devastating (and uniquely Scandinavian) riffs such heft. It helps that Nightrage is a top-shelf supergroup assembled by former Exhumation guitarist Marios Iliopoulos, who recruited guitarist Gus G. (Dream Evil), drummer Per M. Jensen (the Haunted), lead rawthroat and perennial guest vocalist Tomas Lindberg (At the Gates, the Great Deceiver, Crown, Lock Up, etc.), and clean-pipes singer Tom S. Englund (Evergrey) for the outfit’s debut record. And while such highly touted collaborations tend to sound like spontaneous fits of mediocre inspiration (see Passenger and Dimension Zero), Sweet Vengeance is consistently excellent in both song and performance. Arrangements are lean but not overly simplistic (“Macabre Apparition,” “The Tremor”) and the occasional trading-off of Englund’s soaring clean vocal with Lindberg’s distinct howl during “Hero” and “Ethereal” lends a compelling contrast to the songs (even if the idea, limited to four tracks, is under-used). Sonically, Sweet Vengeance is a rich mix of golden-era Swedish death metal (main reference points: At the Gates and In Flames) and the classier elements of Bay Area thrash occasionally peppered with a black metal blastbeat. Most impressive are “The Glow of the Setting Sun” and its groovy, mid-tempo-to-double-time rhythmic pummel bookended by shimmering and melodic clean guitar arpeggios; “At the Ends of the Earth,” which sounds like a beefier, deathlier Megadeth (circa Rust in Peace); and “Circle of Pain,” which smartly exploits a heart-stopping quiet-loud dynamic. One beef is the production from Swedish death metal hit factory Studio Fredman, which, although offering a typically senses-battering drum sound, doesn’t help differentiate Sweet Vengeance from the glut of bands utilizing Fredrik Nordström’s production skills. Still, any fan of the melodic European death metal scene should foam at the mouth upon hearing Nightrage’s debut — even if the stellar lineup was put together for recording purposes only — and such Pavlovian responses are, for the most part, justified. With At The Gates Tompa on vocals

Descent Into Chaos 2005
With a misleading title to say the least, Nightrage’s second album, Descent Into Chaos, finds the Greco-Swedish death metal outfit delivering a highly controlled — if very diverse — breadth of material. Though for the most part rooted in the classic melodic death metal perfected by Swedish greats In Flames, Dark Tranquillity, and vocalist Thomas Lindberg’s own seminal former band, At the Gates (see “Phantasma,” “Jubilant Cry,” “Reality vs. Truth,” etc.), Nightrage also dabble in neo-thrash velocity (“Being Nothing,” “Omen”) of the sort espoused by the Haunted or the Crown (also briefly featuring Lindberg), as well as semi-vintage, midpaced metal styles (“Poems,” “Silent Solitude”) championed by some of Greek guitarists Gus G. and Marios Iliopoulos’ other band exploits. These of course included power metal — a format no one would expect Lindberg to ever touch, but which remarkably lends a few minute traces of hyper-melody and fleet-fingered guitar solos to some of these tracks, most notable among them being the surprisingly accessible “Frozen,” which takes these nuances a step further by adding a quasi-operatic chorus section behind Lindberg’s reliably livid screaming. Then again, he makes himself scarce when it comes to the metallic ballad “Solus,” preferring to let it be an instrumental rather than risk involvement. Anyway, the sum of all these sonic components, not to mention these veteran musicians’ various contributions from their respective areas of expertise, is a stellar and eclectic death metal album, one that might have come off as unfocused were it not for Nightrage’s side-project status and overriding songwriting prowess. This is, of course, reason enough to give Descent into Chaos a spin, but Lindberg loyalists should also be curious to hear him tackling some of the most commercially conscious material of his career.

Track list:
Disc 1: Sweet Vengeance 2003
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

Disc 2: Descent Into Chaos 2005
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 Versus Truth
13. Black Skies
14. Gallant Deeds-featuring Mikael Stanne on vocals