Nevermore
“Enemies of Reality”
(Century Media)
The album comes on stronger than 2000’s “Dead Heart in a Dead World” and stays consistently one step ahead of that previous effort from in quality. “Enemies of Reality” is a more aggressive and bombastic album as a whole with fewer interminable “epics” as the last album. I just wish this album had been produced by Andy Sneap who knows how to produce metal bands like no other metal producer out there. Andy twiddled knobs on “Dead Heart” and the difference in sound is startling. “Dead Heart” glowed with expansive exuberance whereas “Enemies of Reality” has a tight condensed sound like squeezing a lump of coal into a diamond with your sphincter muscles. The production certainly isn’t bad, but it sure as hell doesn’t fill a room.
Warrel Dane still sounds magnificent. Better than ever, really. The rhythm section is smoking hot, tighter and tighter, calibrated to the nearest nanometer. Loomis’s riffs are possibly the most brilliant he’s come up with yet; they’re ferocious, violently eddying chord progressions dripping equal parts anger and sorrow.
This is not a concept album like “Neon Black,” but many of the songs seem to be tightly tied together conceptually. The loose concept thread can be found in the title of the album itself, “Enemies of Reality.” What’s their angle? Let’s say the lyricist read up on his Immanuel Kant.
