Nahemah - The Second Philosophy

Published Jan. 07 2007

*=Staff's pick	Siamese Killing My Architect Nothing* Like A Butterfly In A Storm Change* Labyrinthine Straight Ways Subterranean Airports Phoenix* Today Sunshine Ain't The Same The Speech

Genre	Prog. Death/Experimental	Pablo Egido	Vocals
Tracks	10	Miguel Palazón	Guitar
Runningtime	61 Min.	Roberto Marco	Guitar
Label	Lifeforce Records	Paco Porcel	Bass
Release	26 Jan. 2007	Jose Diego	Drums
Country	Spain	-	Keyboard
Similar artists	Opeth, Mastodon, Tool

Spanish metal is synonymous with power metal to me, but Alicante based Nahemah is probably as far from that as you can get. This dark, suggestive metal goes high on the progressive scale and they add a great deal of death metal in their sound. I can easily say that this is not what I expected to hear. Nahemah formed in 1997 and debuted in 1999 with the self-released album Edens In Communion. The next effort Chrysalis came out in 2002 and now their third album, their first on Lifeforce Records, is about to be released.

Damn, this was a hard one to put the fingers on. I have hated it, I have loved it, and I have listened to it many times to finally be able to sort this album out. We are dealing with the outskirts of my knowledge here with experimental music where I find the most apparent likeness, or influences if you will, to be coming from Opeth. Overly progressive metal that is high on ambience and where death metal plays an important part. The vocal efforts shifts between growls and clean, and the clean ones sound really good while the growling is poor to say the least and further sounds to be out of place.

The complex music oscillates from aggressive to soothing and calm without any warning and the melancholia is hard to escape from as it is ever present within the music from Nahemah. The songs, no matter how innovative the intention or how progressive they are, come out un-organised and it is too much of the same with this album. It tends to become a pretentious grey mess in my ears and I find it hard to take this to me. Although it is not all bad, there are some songs that contain some really wonderful instrumental parts that is to die for, although they are too short and too few to be even close to be able to save the album in my ears. The song Phoenix for instance has an magnificent ending worthy of Tool, and the groove that they get going in Today Sunshine Ain't The Same is excellent, but in all this is just bits and pieces and that is not enough for me.

The one song that makes the difference is Change where Dark Tranquillity meets Opeth, the pace is increased and the melodic guitars are blending. I give the band points for originality and artistic creativity, but in the end, this is not up my alley. I can enjoy parts of this, and oddly enough mostly the parts that are not death metal here, but in the end, it becomes too much of the dreariness for me. Nahemah is balancing on a thin line of pretentiousness in my ears, and too many times they step over it.

Performance	Originality	Production	Vocals	Songwriting
6	9	6	5	4

Summary
4,5 chalices of 10 - Thomas