Ελληνικά
Last Updated on 07:51 AM by Giorgos Tsekas
It’s been fifteen years since the release of “Dead Heart In A Dead World”, a release that had shaken the foundations of the metal scene and Warrel Dane decided to honor it by making a tour in Greece (mostly), Bulgaria and Turkey, playing the best album of the band.
The album was released on September 13, 2000 by Century Media, causing sensation and according to several metal magazines worldwide it was the No 1 album of the year. There were a lot of essential changes in this album. It’s not that “Dreaming Neon Black” wasn’t a good album, on the contrary it was a great album. First of all there was a new producer and thus a new sound. From Neil Kernon the band decided to turn to the hottest producer at the time, Andy Sneap, who did (and still does) wonders behind a console. From the more heavy sound they had in their 3 previous albums and the “In Memory” EP they move on to a clean, mainstream and easier to listen to sound, without losing their unique identity in the process.
From an era when Nevermore had two guitarists, in “Politics..”, “In Memory” and “Dreaming…”, the band now has only Loomis, who used a 7-strings guitar for the first time then and continued using it from that time on. Thus he becomes the master of the game and thanks to his excellent technical training and performance the album is excellent, combining the 80s style with modern elements perfectly. It is probably Dane’s best performance with Nevermore. He screams a little bit, mostly for nostalgic fans, but he seems to be more mature than eve, becoming the decisive factor in each song with his performance. We can not but praise the rhythmic section too with Sheppard / Williams. Great job by both of them. At this point our best wishes for a speedy recovery to Van William’s wife, who is fighting cancer. We hope for the best.
The illustration of the cover is by Travis Smith again, who created a simple cover that managed to be one of the band’s most classic illustration. Nevertheless it wasn’t, like most of their covers, very interesting, and let’s face it, that was always their weak point. Their lyrics are never away from their usual patterns, always sad and gloomy about politics, religion and an overall negative perspective of the world. Everyone has at least a favorite song from this album. “Dead Heart in a Dead World” is, for me, the best (just like “Dreaming…” from their previous album). Beyond that songs like “The River Dragon Has Come”, “We Disintegrate”, “Engines Of Hate”, “Narcosynthesis”, “Inside Four Walls”, “The Heart Collector” have marked us all in a way. A big impression and hype were created by their cover on Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence”. Just like they did with “Love Bites” the cover sounded completely different compared to the original, it was like a completely different song. The least favorite track of the album is of course their most mainstream one, “Believe in Nothing”. It was their simplest song and managed to make their name heard in a bigger crowd. They were never a really mainstream band but they won the respect and recognition in larger audiences.
After all they made it clear that they didn’t care about that and they continued to write their music the way they wanted to. After this release we all know what happened, more or less, with the band’s future being uncertain. But we have Sanctuary. And that is not bad at all.
