Nightmare World

As important as riffs are to heavy metal, they don’t count for a whole lot if the songs created by them are just kinda there in the background. That’s Nightmare World in summary. Glen Drover knew how to throw down a hard-hitting riff face down on the field – it certainly got Dave Mustaine’s attention in the mid-2000s – but the songs constructed out of them don’t really do a whole lot. It tends to come off like him playing a bunch of riffs and going on the first one that sounded vaguely melodic, then everybody else does their thing to match them. Bam, another song in the bag.

Though much of the riffing bounces between thrashy and groovier power metal riffs, there’s this vague sort of Nevermore aesthetic to the overall presentation. There’s just this more down-trodden vibe throughout that helps to drive the riffs forward – and the riffs are, at least, forceful enough in their approach. They might seem simple, but Glen puts some real elbow grease behind those riffs. But where Nevermore (at least on their good stuff) leaned towards catchy, memorable and downright dark tunes, Eidolon… settle for hard-hitting, hard-driving riffs. Vaguely melodic, but it’s at least heavy! Nothing that really pops, but it might get you headbanging enough not to notice.

That’s just it with Nightmare World. It’s got the heaviness and drive, but the melodies come across like they made it up as they went along in the studio. Again, like the riffs are being played and they go for the first thing that sounds melodic enough. It’s an active chore to listen to them too because they all wind up sounding the same, and in the bad monotonous kind of way, too. It’s all these brick wall sounding songs that have nary a discernible melody nor catchy chorus in their midst. “Dreamscape” sort of has them trying to break this trend since it’s not only nearly 13-minutes in length, but its acoustic sort of dream-like intro and then break in the middle gives it a slight epic quality. It succeeds on the front of breaking up the monotony thanks to the intro and break, even if the heavy parts are similarly mediocre to the rest of the album.

With a heavier sound than the preceding two albums – again, drawing a bit more from Nevermore – it is a bit strange for Brian Soulard to maintain the vocals he had when Eidolon were more inspired by Annihilator’s Set the World on Fire. These high-ish pitched, not very powerful vocals contrast heavily with the brick and mortar sound. Not in some cool, ethereal way, either. Maintaining this sinus inflection makes it easier to pay attention to the riffs, but all that ultimately does is make it clear just how mediocre Nightmare World honestly is. There’s a lot of promise but without the necessary care in memorable rhythms and what have you, it’s a real one-and-done album.

Eidolon, with the two Shawn-brothers, probably most famous for their playing with Megadeth. The band, one of the – in my opinion – best power/thrash these days, and a band that doesn’t seem to get the fame they deserves. After their two, actually not so good, albums they came back with this “Nightmare World”, which is full of awesome riffs, solos, verses. I do have two complaints though, the singer Brian Soulard (Eidolon has never had a really “good” singer, except now later when they got Nils K. Rue). Brian has a way too monotonous voice, does never “surprise” you with a high-pitched metal siren or something, he sings in the same way almost through the whole CD, in the length it gets really boring. My other complaint lies in the choruses. They haven’t written any cool chorus at all, mostly it’s just the title of the song being sung to the riff that starts the song, this is on at least half of the songs. Monotonous and boring in the length, again. But except these two things, NOTHING is lame/bad.

Fact is, I can only find two bad songs, the unnecessary short intrumental, “Majestic Interlude” and the lame and uninspired “Repulsion” (which though has a great solo-passage). But on all other songs we get heavy riffs, which mostly has really heavy verses + awesome guitar solos. Glen really knows how to write great solos. The song most worthy to mention is the ending song, almost 13 minute long, “Dreamscape”, which begins with a mystical acoustic intro then graduation into a moderately fast and heavy passage with cool drumming by Shawn. The verses are cool here, and also, actually, the chorus, somewhat calm and nice. But the absolutely best with the song is the interlude, beginning at 4:36 to 6:56. First, heavy as hell slow galooping part, then leads into a kind a cool part with Shawn’s drumplaying. After that comes a boring acoustic part, feels like they just felt they had to “fill out” the song with this boring part, but luckily after that we get a last verse + chorus. This is a awesome “long-track”, maybe nothing like Iced Earth’s “Dante’s Inferno”, but still heavy and great.

The album do have a great producion, heavy & raw guitarsound, pounding hard drums, and singer Soulard is well heard (almost too well), but the brothers knows what to do behind the mixer-board too it seem =) In overall, this is a even album, that is absolutely recommended to all of you fans of think maybe Brainstorm or just heavy/thrash but with melodies. In any way, the Shawn brother + company would later on also do even & great albums like this (except Apostles Of Defiance) but other than that one, it’s just to choose, you will not regret it. Buy and bang your head !

3 best songs: Noctem Aeturnus (Eternal Night), Eye Of Illusion, Dreamscape

Eidolon's Nightmare World, is a very underrated album. It combines the sure essence of speed and thrash guitar riffs with power metal lyrics. Taken in as a whole, this album plays some real good metal for the new millennium. It has it's strengths and some weaknesses that make this album an overall solid sound of distortion. When it comes down to the wire, Nightmare World has all the elements of a good heavy metal album.

Musically, this album is built. The guitars have a most excellent show on this album. At times you will be gripped by the melodic clean intro's and title song Fortress of Red. At other times you will just all out head bang till your ears bleed. The riffs are very well designed. You don't see a lot of the straight forward, fast picking, same notes like most power metal tends to shove in our ears. Rather you see very nice designed riffs, that change frequently to suit the songs mood. The solo's are also top notch; there is a lot of duel guitar licks and just an amazing show from the guitars.

One thing about this album I had a hard time getting used to was the singer. He grows on you though. Brian Soulard just doesn't come off as a singer who has balls. He has a very straight forward flat lined vocal tone, which gets boring after a while. In my opinion he doesn't scream as much as he should. I mean hell, it's power metal -let out a war cry as you slay the dragon! A couple listens to this album and you will be hooked on all of it's aspects.

Production is great; i.e. no problems with sounds quality, instruments over powering each other, etc. etc. Everything is done at an absolute good performance; this album has a lot to offer. Eidolon has proved that they can still impress us in the new century. Some good songs to check out are Nightmare World, Lunar Mission, and Glorified Suicide.