Nevermore - Enemies Of Reality

*=Staff's pick	Enemies of Reality* Ambivalent Never Purify Tomorrow Turned Into Yesterday* I, Voyager Create the Infinite Who Decides* Noumenon Seed Awakening

Genre	Progressive Power Metal	Warrel Dane	Vocals
Tracks	9	Jeff Loomis	Guitar
Runningtime	41 Min.	-	Guitar
Label	Century Media	Jim Sheppard	Bass
Release	21 July 2003	Van Williams	Drums
Country	USA	-	Keyboards
Similar artists	Evergrey, Mercenary, Pathos

Seattle's Nevermore is back again with their now fifth full-length album and I find Enemies of Reality to be their most balanced album since the selftitled debut from 1995. The music goes in the same tradition as we have learned to know from these guys in the past and it has a lot of similarities with thrash music in it, mostly it's shown in the guitar-parts and solo's.

First out from the starting grid is the title track Enemies of Reality, a track that nails you to the wall with this energetic and dark progressive metal and it holds you there straight through the first three tracks of the album. The music is powerfull and sometimes it feels like organized chaos only to then evolve into these great melodylines and with a great technical guitar playing by Jeff Loomis while Warrel Dane delivers the vocals as his life was depending on it.

When we reach the fourth track the style becomes more emotional rather than technical. And with the Nevermore styled ballad, Tomorrow Turned Into Yesterday, we find a track that is definitely one of the greatest tracks I've ever heard from the band. It is close to the song The Sanity Assassin from the debut Nevermore (1995), it is dark and a bit melancholic with a great chorus and explicit guitarplaying, this is perfection in my ears. The track Who Decides follows in the same vein as Tomorrow Turned Into Yesterday but with a bit more aggressive edge to it and with a chorus that isn't quite as good, but nevertheless it has a wonderful guitar-line that runs through the song.

The one thing you might complain about is perhaps that there isn't enough diversity between the songs, that they are to similar to each other, but who the hell cares when they are as great as these are. Even if the tracks on Enemies of Reality might not be counted as all-time high Nevermore songs, you will not find a weak song on the entire album. And with their complex style of metal you won't get bored with this album for a very long time, probably never, you can take my word on that.

The album is also available as a limited 2-disc version where the second disc is a DVD containing five videos. Three of the tracks are regular videos while the last two songs are recorded live, always nice to get a little extra treat in form of videos when buying a record since you don't get to see their or hardly any metal videos too often on television, at least not in Sweden.

See also review of: The Obsidian Conspiracy , Praises To The War Machine

Production	Vocals	Compositions
7	9	9

Summary
9 chalices of 10 - Thomas