Artist: Emergency Gate
Title: The Nemesis Construct
Type: Album
Label: Silverwolf Productions

“This is the band who sound like Soilwork” was my initial reaction when I heard “The Nemesis Construct”, recalling Emergency Gate’s previous album “Rewake” (2009). They’re straight out of the blocks this time with “Alternative Dead End”. Action-packed melodic Death Metal comes at you from all angles. The riff is catchy. There’s aggression, more aggression and growls. Laboured clean vocal structures, bordering on Hardcore, feature. “Nothing to Lose” is more of the same. The thunderous background continues. I can’t get it out of my head that this is like earlier Soilwork, cleaner but not as pleasing. I just couldn’t get away from this comparison. The last track on the album “World Escape” is almost a tribute to Soilwork. It starts in the tone of “Bastard Chain” and it then drops into a slower version of “Nerve”. During “Get ready for the final destruction”, I found myself singing “Walk straight for a final solution”. During “Nothing to Lose” I had an irrelevant discussion with myself over whether this is commercial or not. I came to the conclusion that it is. What matters is how good it is and the third track “Dark Side of the Sun” is a gem. Basically Emergency Gate play to their own strength. The core of it is fast and hard and there’s bags of energy. The aggressive preaching vocal fits into the high level of melody. There’s a catchy sing-a-long harmony strings together well with the mechanical beat. There’s a bit of electro and to cap it all off, there are screams of horror. All in all, it’s a powerful and multi-faceted track. “An End to the Age of Man” is a worthy successor. While having the aggressive melody of “A Predator’s Portrait” about it, it pumps along well and is almost a piece of Electro Metal Goth, which is an interesting departure. I liked the keyboards and the chorus is interestingly disharmonic to go with the sinister lyrics, maybe like 69 Eyes of something like that.

The album was getting interesting, but from “Point Zero”, it all goes astray. ”Point Zero” is along the lines of simplistic Cyber Metal. “Excite!” does anything but. There’s some energy but this and the following tracks are no more than standard Modern Metal. “This Time” sums it up. Continuity is lacking, it’s not pleasing and is largely aimless, as if the band are going through the motions. What happened? “Diary of Nightmares” has much-needed drama, and there’s real punch to the growled vocals but the harmonies are unusually wimpish. “The Green Mile” is a bit of a guitar fest and the fast and furious battery on “In Vain” gives a positive dimension, but the direction and focus which were there on “Dark Side of the Sun” is lost.

I think this is an improvement on “Remake” which suffered from the same tendency to lose direction while showing flashes of energy and promise. “The Nemesis Construct” does have good qualities and there are flashes of inspiration and imagination, but Emergency Gate lost me at times with this album and my conclusion is that there is further work to be done.

http://www.emergency-gate.de
http://www.myspace.com/emergencygateonline
http://www.silverwolf-productions.com
http://www.myspace.com/propainspace