Nightmare – Dead Sun

Playing Time: 54 min   Label: AFM Records  Release: 25^th November 2016

Although the French Nightmare have been active since 1979 and played several bigger tours in the last decade (e.g. as support for Sabaton and Blind Guardian), I had not really paid attention to them. Maybe it is due their non-Metal origin…

But France should appear on the Metal map, as “Dead Sun” shows. It is easy to hear that the band has already had some experience. All of the songs have classic Heavy Metal as a basis, but they also have a wide spectrum of musical shades. The bandwidth, which ranges from melodic stuff to blast beat (‘Inner Sanctum’) results in a nice diversity. To make it more diverse, a classic metal ballad would have been nice. The only weakness in points of songwriting are the choruses, which are not catchy and distinguished enough.

The sound, in return, is really huge and bombastic (although no orchestral instruments are included!). But every single instrument can still be heard clearly. That’s how it has to be! In terms of sound, also the rough and powerful voice of Maggy Luyters must be mentioned. It is really great, but also a bit too one-dimensional over the whole album playing time. Some more variation, maybe with some (male) backing vocals, would have been nice.

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