The long-awaited fifth album from Nailed to Obscurity has arrived.
To mark their 20th anniversary, the German band comprising Volker Dieken (guitar), Jan-Ole Lamberti (guitar), Jan Hillrichs (drums, Battue), Raimund Ennega (vocals, Burial Vault), and Lutz Neemann (bass, Battue) has released Generation of the Void via Nuclear Blast.
Bass was recorded by Carsten Schorn (Battue), who has since left the band.
The album begins with the mysterious introduction of Glass Bleeding, the first track, which quickly brings back the darkness with melancholic riffs and powerful vocals. There is a wave of calm where Raimund also offers us a clean, spellbinding voice that wonderfully tempers the violence before giving way to a jerky pace and then to the massive rhythm of Liquid Mourning. The track is already well known, having been released three years ago, but its soaring harmonics resonate as powerfully as ever between clear vocals and screams, assuming a majestic slowness that the drums sometimes disturb to lead us to Overcast, a much more tortured composition. The dissonant leads respond to certain catchy, irregular groovy passages, but the track remains quite long, reserving a few surprises for us, such as the break or the soaring guitars at the end, then Spirit Corrosion returns to a more raw approach, quickly dissipated by the melodies and elaborate prog accents. Despite a few aggressive passages, the vocals remain mostly calm, bringing a touch of light to the ambient darkness, accompanied by a few backing vocals, but the track suddenly ends, leaving the eponymous composition Generation Of The Void to carry us away with its more energetic rhythm. The contrast in this track is simply perfect, moving from imposing, haunting choruses to intoxicating passages that naturally make you bang your head, before moving on to an equally nuanced sound on Echo Attempt, the longest track, which is just as capable of offering furious melodic death patterns as it is of long moments of soaring tranquility. The length of the track allows it to juggle between its two major influences, sometimes mixing them to move from one to the other before allowing us to catch our breath with the first moments of Allure, whose various ethereal effects make it sound like a soothing ballad. Saturation resurfaces halfway through the track, making it quite unsettling and ensuring a fairly natural transition to Clouded Frame, the next track, which offers a similar dynamic in terms of soft sounds but also allows heaviness and roars to haunt it at times before a grand finale. Misery’s Messenger follows with more accessible sounds, but still reserves its share of twists and turns, such as the unexpected eruption, then The Ides Of Life rings the album’s end with a sound marked both by waves of rage and melodious touches that lead us straight to the final.
With new influences, Nailed to Obscurity has come back to life with its most accomplished work to date. Generation of the Void has enormous richness and potential, and I can’t wait to discover it live on their next tour.
95/100
