Nocturnal Rites - Grand Illusion

*=Staff's pick	Fools Never Die Never Trust Still Alive* Something Undefined Our Wasted Days* Cuts Like A Knife End Of Our Rope Never Ending* One By One* Deliverance

Genre	Heavy Metal	Jonny Lindqvist	Vocals
Tracks	10	Fredrik Mannberg	Guitar
Runningtime	47 Min.	Nils Norberg	Guitar
Label	Century Media	Nils Eriksson	Bass
Release	19 Sept. 2005	Owe Lingvall	Drums
Country	Sweden	-	Keyboards
Similar artists	Masterplan, Kamelot

Nocturnal Rites are, if you ask me, one of Sweden's flagship in the melodic metal scene. I have followed them since their debut in 1995 and I liked them from the start even though they at that time played kind of a simple and clichee-filled standard metal which sounds quite funny when listening to it today. With their fourth release Afterlife (2000), new singer Jonny Lindkvist made an entrance and they immediatly took a big step in their musical career with an astounding release of powerful and melodic metal delivered with awesome vocals. Since then they have released two more albums and have received good critics but never really reached the big breakthrough.

This album might be the one that (finally) bring out Nocturnal Rites to a wider and bigger audience. The major part of the power metal elements have been peeled off and this could basically be described as heavy and slightly uptempo hard rock with a metal touch to it. It is far from as fast as before and not much action takes place during the verses apart from the occasional catchy riff, but instead the focus is on catchy, strong and melodic refrains with immediate hit potential. The vocals by Jonny Lindqvist are as usual of world class: rich, powerful and characteristic and they really make the songs justice.

The tempo is mainly mid- or below this time with only 2 uptempo songs, and the double bass drums moments are not many but when they appear, they are justified and are really adding something instead of just thundering away randomly. In the same way are the solos perfectly balanced and a tiny bit held back but nevertheless distinct, and are adding perfectly to the atmosphere. But even if I am of the opinion that Nocturnal Rites master the art of making good mid tempo songs, I can't help wanting a few more uptempo killers like Never Ending.

Apart from the above mentioned alterations in the sound picture, this is Nocturnal Rites as we have got to now them. They deliver an overall very strong and solid album but even if there are no filler songs, the real high peaks are strangely absent. There are a quite a few killer bridges and refrains on the album, as well as a few really nice driven riffs in almost every song, but really only one completely smashing hit song is to be found, which is Never Ending.

This is not really as strong as Afterlife and Shadowland but slightly better than New World Messiah. Once again very well done, and if there is any justice in the world they will have left a big impression around europe after their upcoming tour with Gamma Ray this autumn.