Neaera
Armamentarium
Metal Blade
The red in the sky is ours, too!
You gotta admire a band that is willing to almost admit their lack of originality: Click on Neaera’s website, and you’ll find this German five-piece telling their fans to “go out and buy the new records from Heaven Shall Burn and Misery Speaks… awesome and brutal stuff and we can’t wait to steal their ideas for our next record(s) hehehehe…” That takes a certain amount of balls, and is maybe why some of the nods, winks, homages, influences and perhaps even blatant thefts to be found on Armamentarium only add to the likability of this third album by the monsters from Münster.
On their debut, Neaera were solidly in thrall to the Göteborg rulebook; nothing wrong with that, except that everyone was doing it. This time around, Neaera have blended in a weightier, almost more traditionally death metal feel to most of the 10 tracks, down-tuning and adding a crushing bottom-end that is lifted squarely from Bolt Thrower, especially on “Spreading the Spawn,” the title track and “In Loss.” Melodic breaks are sufficiently plaintive to be more akin to peak-period Paradise Lost than whichever Göteborg band you care to name; and the dual vocals give some tracks like “The Need for Pain” a welcome whiff of Carcass. The closing “Liberation” seals the deal by recalling nothing so much as Hypocrisy’s “The Final Chapter,” itself a masterpiece of unoriginality.
All of which leads to two conclusions: One, that if Slaughter of the Soul can continue to be ripped off like this, then it must be transcending to a Reign in Blood level of definitiveness, and two, that Neaera have made an awesomely good metal record. —Nick Terry
