Nightrage – The Venomous

Label: Despot Records  Playing Time: 50 min  Release: 31st March 2017

Nightrage were founded 17 years ago in Greece. Founding members were today’s main man Marios Iliopoulos and a guy called Gus G., meanwhile band leader of Firewind and guitar player of Ozzy Osbourne. For the last 10 years most of the bandmates have been Swedish. This circumstance explains some parallels between “The Venomous” and early albums of another well-known Swedish band.

To some extent, “The Venomous” reminds me of albums like “Jester Race” and “Whoracle” by In Flames. Besides the affiliation to the same genre, another reason is the great guitar work. It combines fast riffs with fine guitar leads. A downside is the quite monotonous songwriting and a lack of catchiness. Some of the songs, e.g. the title track, ‘Bemoan’ and ‘From Ashes Into Stone’, are a bit better than the rest, but even after five times listening to the album, nothing of those songs remains in my memory. Although this album shows great instrumental potential, “The Venomous” is a bit of a disappointment to me.

www.nightrage.com