Progressive Death Metal titans
The Nimrods have been hidden for months; while the band members were often seen around town suffering the excesses of drugs and alcohol, they hadn't even played a show. After working with
Quarantine for two records; frontman and guitarist
Jimmy Him had been missing the studio and began composing songs with co-writer and bassist
Davey Matlock. "It was definitely more of a combined effort this time," Jimmy Him said. "There used to be my songs,Davey's songs, and Kit's songs. Now there all just Nimrod songs".
Redemption is a huge combination of different styles of metal and progressive metal. It features harmonized counterpoint melodies reminiscent of Orchid and Morningrise era Opeth, jazzy interludes and drumming reminiscent of Atheist, more technical progressive riffs reminiscent of Augury, and jazz leads and the occasional down-tuned riffs of Meshuggah. "We tried our hardest to mix together a variety of styles because we wanted to stretch our genre as far as possible. We tried to mix brutality and beauty as much as possible and at the same time stay true to our death metal roots, as well as the progressive ones." Davey said. The single released is the final song and title track on the album also called
Redemption and paints a great picture for the rest of the album.
The instrumental performances are at their true prime. Jimmy's singing voice has gotten to the point where he can sing on par with his contemporaries yet retains his signature rasp. His harsh vocals are even better. Using growls that can be either extremely low, or even somewhat high.Using screeches that are both sinister and gut wrenching full of emotion and anger at the same time. His guitar skills have greatly increased with varying influences from bluesy leads, to jazzy chord progressions, to full out shredding using a variety of techniques. His rhythms can either be very chuggy and tight using his 7 string or technical and melodic with tapping and string skipping thrown in.
Davey has switched basses to a 5 string fretless bass. This emphasizes the jazz influence and also gives his sound more definition. Davey's lines only follow Jimmy completely a few times. He occasionally will follow part of Jimmy's lines and then throw in a tail that he made, not different from Mike Dirnt's work on the earlier Green Day records. He also uses several slides which emulates the sound of a horn, a technique he picked up from Steve DiGiorgio on the Death record "Individual Thought Patterns". Davey's lines are very technical yet fitting, and constantly heard. He plays exclusively with his fingers so the speed he reaches on some songs is amazing.His solos are also on most of the songs. Usually he gets a 30 second break to do what he does best and he does it well, never showing off too much but still showing that he's got quite a large amount of skills.
Kit Saunders is a drummer who never really needs an introduction. His technical prowess, accuracy, and speed are matched by few. Kit stated that his main influences for the album were the drumming on Atheist's Elements, Satyricon's Nemesis Divina, Opeth's Damnation,Cryptopsy's None So Vile, Cynic's Focus, and Tool's Lateralus and 10,000 Days. He uses several "tribal" sections along with very over the top jazz fills which are great for climaxes within songs. His double bass speed is so fast that he was forced to trigger his drums because some of the hits weren't heard and sounded like an odd roll, he also likes the sound of properly triggered drums. Kit brings back the intense blast beats of earlier records which are fast and very thick, like those of Decapitated. He also uses difficult polyrhythms, mixing various odd time signatures that were inspired from Meshuggah's Tomas Haake. "I don't even think I can outdo myself on the next record because I just put everything I had into this record. The title track is the most intense thing I've ever done. It opens with my sort of drum solo which is just some 260 bpm extreme metal drumming, then in the middle I've got a tribal section with polyrhythms and whatnot,finally at the end there's a very jazzy part I play with really difficult fills and ride accents which took me forever to learn" he said. All of his tracks were recorded in one take after he practiced his pieces for 2 months.
In overall the tracks are not only solid but amazing. Out of the 10 songs at least 7 are amazing and complex, yet not so much that you can't understand them. The performances of the individual musicians are the best they've ever done as well.
Redemption is definitely a highlight for metal and the band is very proud of it. They're scheduling a tour and are planning to stay on the scene for a very long time. Track by track review coming soon.Buy now!
OOC:When I compare their instruments to musicians I'm not saying they sound exactly like them, I'm using them as a comparison, for those who might say something like "You sound to much like blank" so yeah. Worked really hard on this so please comment.
Edited by user 15 July 2010 03:23:02(UTC)
| Reason: Not specified
