Afterlife

After 3 well regarded albums in a medium-paced, old school, sword-and-sorcery type of power metal, Nocturnal Rites decided to go all-out speed metal for their 4th outing, and suffered next to nothing in terms of quality. The change isn't even slightly subtle. The riffs are much more thrashy, the leads much more speed metal, the guitar tone much more crunchy and was downtuned substantially, the production is far more modern, the lyrics much darker, the drums much more full and punchy, with much more driving, thrash-style beats, and yet - it feels natural. It's really remarkable; to pull such a thing off is exceedingly rare. The quality of the songwriting hardly took a hit at all.

It's faster, heavier, darker, more intense, more evil sci-fi, less lighthearted fantasy, and the only thing I can find to account for this change is to accommodate the great Jonny Linqvist. Soaring, versatile, with plenty of underlying snarl. Whether this is the reason for the band's change or a simple coincidence, the vocals are perfectly coupled with the music.

It's about as down-tuned and meaty as you'll ever find in power metal, the riffs are aggressive, the pace is quick, and the vocals kick ass. Right out of the gate, the title track gives you a gut punch with a quick interesting intro that leads so nicely into a classic power-speed metal riff. Some riffs take them almost full circle, like the verse of Temple of the Dead is nearly sounds like de facto Swedish death metal. Hell and Back is another song that may contain something that could be considered death metal with it's opening riff, with it's large jumps over the fretboard and dissonant note sequence. Being able to work these kinds of riffs into power metal is just glorious.

The only draw back of this album is the fact that it falls off pretty egregiously going into the second half. The sixth, seventh and eighty tracks all seem to just casually stroll along, where the preceding 5 tracks steamrolled everything in their sight. All three of these tracks have fairly mundane choruses that seem to have a forced sing-along aspect to them. They're not bad, by any means, but the drop in quality sure is disappointing. If not for these three songs, this album could be north of 90 fairly easily.

But, the rest of the songs are brilliant. The title track and Hell and Back are absolute classics. Great stuff.

I have a confession to make, I did not buy this album when it came out because I didn’t like the news that a change was made. Ever since the Load incident with Metallica, I always associated change with a down grade in the quality of the music. There are probably some power metal fans out there who got into the earlier work of this band and felt the same way, without even hearing this newer style, which is a heavier version of it’s former self. But understand one thing before you write this album off, greatness is something that transcends any individual genre of metal, if a band has it they don't necessary lose it merely by going a new route.

With the exception of Anders Zackrisson, all of the musicians that have given us great music from the first Nocturnal Rites era are still present, and Jonny Lindkvist is equally up to the vocal challenge as Anders. Nils Norberg is still pumping out leads with the best of them, only now he has a lot more sounds effects going to further complement his solos, which are just as crazy but not quite as long-winded as before. The rhythm guitar tracks and the bass have gotten a lot heavier due to the addition of 7 string guitars. This is the only metal band that I like that uses them. The keyboards have also gotten a bit darker, though the dense atmosphere that they created on previous works is still present.

The music on this album actually still has some elements of the earlier material, particularly the melodies and the riffs. The title track has a highly powerful and melodic chorus that, minus the dark and low guitars, could have occurred during the earlier years. “The Sinner’s Cross” has a beautiful organ interlude at it’s center that reminds a lot of keyboard devices on previous works, particularly the intro to “Warrior’s Return”. “The Sign” has a lot of melodic elements to it that remind of the slower anthems of previous works such as “Lay of Ennui” and “Eternity Holds”, though with a much darker sound.

Some newer influences of the more speed/thrash variety that have made their way onto here are on full display throughout the album. “Wake up dead” has a powerful driving guitar line and some extremely dark lyrics on the topic of suicide, an issue not touched on previous NR works. “Genetic Distortion Sequence” has an amazing intro riff reminiscent a bit of early Metallica material, most notably “No Remorse”. The lyrical subject matter gets into the Sci-Fi realm, another topic not touched on previous works. “Temple of the Dead” is a fast paced speed metal fest with a powerful vocal performance, and along with the slower and more atmospheric “Hellenium”, delves into some very dark subject matter.

In conclusion, this is an excellent album that probably hasn’t reached it’s full potential audience. I truly believe that this album will have some cross over appeal to fans of more melodic power metal, despite the very dark nature of the lyrics and the sound. It is not better than older NR, nor is it a step down, it is an equally good effort down a different path. Although I would recommend that fans of lighter metal listen to “Shadowland” first, this album is well worthy of your consumption. Fans of speed and thrash will also find plenty to like about this album.

Truly a remarkable change for this band. This album is much heavier and straight forward metal with slight tinges of thrash evolving out of some of the riffs. The new vocalist is a quantum leap forward for the band since his voice is powerful and melodic in a simultaneous way. The production value on this album is very tight and every instrument is perfectly captured from the mix, an overall great sounding album.
The songs on this album seem to be much more memorable than what the band has released in the past, especially tunes such as Wake Up Dead, and The Sinner's Cross which will have the listener chanting these catchy choruses for days on end.
The musicianship is above average and the each band member gives a noble performance, I suppose from a creative standpoint the band has reached its peak.
The only real let down would have to be the lyrics which are downright cheesey from time to time and often they're kinda strange. One more small problem with this release is that although the riffs are good, there aren't really all that many of them and a lot of songs almost seem to sound quite similar to one another.
Overall a decent powermetaller, and by far Nocturnal Rites Best Albulm!

I'll be honest with you, this is the only Nocturnal Rites album I have heard in it's entirety, and come to think of it, I haven't heard any songs with their prior singer. All I know is that this is a helluva good album. I understand they used to be fairly standard Euro power metal, but this is straight up US styled power metal (although a lot from Sweden is a lot closer to the US style than the Europe style).

Overall, the guitar riffs are a tad bit weak, still enjoyable though. The Sign features some heavily downtuned riffing and an almost doom like atmosphere. There's also a lack of guitar soloing here, when they appear, they're great, but there's a few songs that could use more soloing.

The vocal melodies on here are really the star of this album. Singer Jonny Lindkvist has a phenominal voice, I don't quite know who to compare him to, he has some Dio throatish qualities, but then he has this little squeak he does that is unique. He sings with power and passion, and does not wimp out. The actual melodies he writes are wonderful, they're hauntingly catchy, but without being cheesy or repeating the same line over and over.

There are only one or two songs that stand out above the others on here, but by the same token, there isn't a single song here that isn't great to listen to. Plus the band knows exactly how long to make their songs, they're not too long, yet not too short. That's something that's pretty rare. The only thing is, this album took a few spins for me to get comfortable with the melodies and grow on me to the point it has.

All in all, I'd highly reccomend this album to fans of US power metal like Jag Panzer or Steel Prophet.

So what we have here is a total change in style from this band. From an atmospheric power metal band, they have turned into a total speed metal band, not all that much removed from newer Exciter, or a better comparison would be Agent Steel's "Omega Conspiracy", in that some of the old atmosphere is certainly maintained.

However, what we have here are crushing riffs after crushing riffs. Songs like "Wake Up Dead" and "Genetic Distortion Sequence" own greatly with masterful solos to complement very solid riffage.

The only complaint is, sometimes the songs sound a bit similar. It's working off of a kind of limited riff set, as some speed metal albums tend to do. Still, this is definitely a very good release, and they managed to pull off the change in sound without compromising the quality severely.

Well, what can I say? I used to hate Nocturnal Rites but this album proves that a metal band can actually make a fairly drastic change in their style and be as good or in this case 1,000,000 times better!

With Afterlife Nocturnal Rites changed singers and moved from the power metal of earlier albums to speed metal ala Riot's "Thundersteel" and Judas Priest's "Painkiller" and did it as well as both bands ever did. The only unfortunate cange the band made on this album was cutting down on how much soloing Nils Norberg does. His solo time is cut drastically from prior albums and that was the only redeeming value of the earlier albums but luckily for Nocturnal Rites they wrote songs that don't have to rely on solos to be good.

The album kicks off with speeder and title track "Afterlife" and from this point on you don't look back. It's one awesome metal ride from beginning to end with some nice variations of slow, fast, and mid-paced songs. This works very nicely. Along with great music each song has a strong chorus and even though new singer Johnny Lindkvist doesn't have the range of Nocturnal's prior singer he does have more aggression and he also has some of the catchiest chorus' in songs like "Afterlife", "Wake Up Dead", "The Sinner's Cross"...well actually every song on the album has some damn catchy part to it, always bringing you back for more.

Is this album worth buying? I would say so, for the six months following my purchase of this album this was practically the only cd I listened to and I still pull it out atleast once a month so that it can perplex me of how a band who, before this album, couldn't write a good album to save their lives were able to come out of nowhere with one of THE best albums ever released.