Artist: Neaera
Title: Forging The Eclipse
Type: Album
Label: Metal Blade Records

I bloody well hate this band’s name. It’s quite understandable that some German groups are going to have names that are difficult to spell; Japanische Kampfhörspiele & Einstürzende Neubauten are the scourge of many a music reviewer but a little 6 letter, one word band name like Naerea, Nearae, Nearae Neaere, Neaera fuck it! This is a Greek word anyway and one of its meanings is prostitute and I wish these whores would change their name. Anyway time to calm down and get back to the task at hand. I am currently blaring the third album and the first one I heard by this lot 2007s’ Armamentarium away at ridiculously high volume and reminding myself why I went quite so mad over the superior At The Gates worship from this melodic, metalcore, whatever you want to call them band when it came out. Let’s face it there are so many tired examples flogging this knackered horse it had to be good to stand out from the mediocrity, and it was. Not so last album ‘Omnicide – Creation Unleashed’ from just last year, it simply didn’t have the spark and got a couple of plays before I shook my head and deleted it from the hard drive.

Well just a year later and rumours were going around that they had their mojo back. Perhaps the band realised that they had lost a bit of a spark as they certainly got this next album out smartish. We have Andy Classen involved on the drum tracks and the mixing here is done by Tue Madsen so there is obviously no expense spared. ‘The Forging’ sets it up serving as a nice atmospheric instrumental opener and ‘Heavens Descent’ comes in with a welter of drums. Singer Benjamin "Benny" Hilleke (Benny Hill) seems to have expanded his vocal range since the stuff I was just listening to. He hits both high squawks and low gruff tones in one fluid movement making it sound like there are two singers. It’s slightly difficult to look at this as simply melodic death metal, there is the odd beat-down and it does sit between death and hardcore camps at times, even adding some grind here and there. There are swaggering meaty Slayerized riffs flowing through ‘In Defiance’ and there is plenty of appeal to be seen as well as crossover potential here, no doubt explaining 40,000 plus MySpace friends (kudos to them all for spelling the band’s name right and ending up there). ‘Eight Thousand Sorrows Deep’ is downright ferocious and full of rage, pissed of, angry and bruising as this one hurtles along, even throwing some blackened Zyklonic sounding riffs into the mix.

There may not be a huge amount of variety and you know each song is going to have two vocal mindsets, thick guitar harmonies and battering drums driving them along but they play it well and reel you in. The one moment of tool downing is on moody instrumental ‘Certitude’ then it’s off again all guns blazing. Although not offering anything particularly new to the genre this lot do it well and on tour with Caliban, Soilwork All That Remains and Bleed From Within, Neaera should definitely stick out from that scrapheap.

http://www.myspace.com/neaera