Artist: Nervecell
Title: Preaching Venom
Type: Album
Label: Lifeforce Records

It’s not very often you get band from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Dubai to be precise, especially in a culture such as that metal music is quite hard to find, I found this when I went there on holiday! So what of Nervecell? Formed in 1999, residents in UAE (Citizens from other countries) and are officially a three-piece, utilising session drummers, such as David Haley from Australian death metallers Psycroptic. When it comes to metal in the UAE I can only find 18 bands listed from various Internet sources at most.

You have your basic death metal formula, take a pinch of ‘Domination’ era Morbid Angel, add a touch of Swedish melodic death in the slower moments a-la Arch Enemy/Dark Tranquility (the guitar break in ‘For Every Victim Fallen’ for example and the ending moments of ‘Haute Monde Façade’) and you have Nervecell. Upon first listen, it is pleasurable but not outstanding, two or three more stabs at this release then I get it. In fact the only thing I don’t like about the album is the metalcore-ish breakdowns in ‘Flesh & Memories’. Other than that, it can be said it’s paint by numbers death metal. I would have hoped some home country/regional influences would have been included rather than the slightest acoustic inkling, but it’s pretty much an American/melodic Swedish death metal slab of headbanging appreciation with a polish death metal production. You do often wonder, “now where have I heard that riff before”, but to be fair to the band, this is pretty good quality by anyone’s standards. I am just looking at their website and wondering how their shows went in Europe this year, ‘Wacken’ and ‘With Full Force’ especially. September and October sees the band embark on a European tour, once again the UK gets shafted with no dates listed, something we have come to expect I am afraid with complacent UK fans and the expense of bringing a band outside of the EU to the UK.

Picking at the positives (of which there are a lot), ‘Ratios’ is a really well arranged instrumental piece, lots of things going on, in fact quite progressive death metal in its approach – Opeth anyone? Vocally, it’s certainly the traditional death metal gusto for the entire album, no need to grunt, squeal and snarl on this one! Nervecell are an interesting band certainly displaying their influences on their sleeves, the album still manages to provide a good listening experience if not 100% original or pure, a mixture of death and thrash riffs (‘Beyond Our Sins’) and melodies greets the listener at many points during the album. Nervecell are a band certainly worth checking out.

http://www.nervecell.net/
http://www.myspace.com/nervecell
http://www.lifeforcerecords.com/

Paul Maddison

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