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Nevermore > Dead Heart in a Dead World > Reviews > angel_of_pain_000
Nevermore - Dead Heart in a Dead World

–a psychedelic journey into a shapeless reality- - 93%

angel_of_pain_000, May 9th, 2005

If Dreaming Neon black can be considered the absolute masterpiece of Nevermore's production, Dead Heart, in a Dead World is the obvious successor and the natural progression of their journey through human issues.
Nevermore are one of the most controverse bands in metal scene of the whole world. Many people think that their grinding riffs, united to Dane’s particular vocals, are really awful, “only noise” or something like this.
I agree: Nevermore makes bad music. There is not (with the exception of some ballads) a melodic path to drive the listener, the sounds are grinding, vocals are cruel and someway nothing but screams of a dying man.
But tell me: what is the real aim of this music? What is the message behind these painful growls? Why a great baritone singer like Warrel Dane is wasting his voice recording this shit?
Because life is shit. And so no other sound, no other metal band in the world can express so well man’s pain, grief and broken dreams. No other metal band can make you feel so down, so insignificant, so sad. No other song we can play but a crying scream of agony (“...all play dead.”).
So, the question that a critic must pone to himself is: how much this nears to the poetic aim (..metal is poetry, and if you don’t agree you’d better set your ass out of this site..!!!)? The obvious answer is that Nevermore music may not look good, but it perfectly represents the image of men condemned by god to dwell in pain “in this useless hole in time/on our way to the black unknown”.
Nevermore does nothing but following the path of metal, which has –in time- put his basements on anguish, anger and death. They just made a jump forward on this way, and few people understood it. This is more metal than metal!
After this ‘short’ intro, it’s time to focus our attention on the work of art that DHiDW is. The title itself represents the emptiness and the sorrow that will grow in you while crawling on the psychedelic notes of this album. The ‘natural evolution’ between DNB and DHiDW is constituted by anger and sorrow of man against god, nature and humanity seen as ‘flesh’ to the introspection to the ego, the rebellion against society and technology as a mind-controller. Eventually, man realizes to be and believe in nothing, and looking around (and inside) himself he can’t see anything but a shapeless, dead world. The successive progression will come with the even more contested Enemies of Reality – but this is another story. The thing we can easily notice is the dramatic evolution of Nevermore’s conception of the ‘kosmos’ (= beautiful...) the Greek word used first by Aristotle to describe the universe.

Narcosynthesis: Not the best song of this album, but built on a solid riffage base. The anger of the first part disappears with a sort of slowing praise to the cleaning power of time (“Turn my blood to sand / The life falls through the hourglass and grows cold...”)

We Disintegrate: One of my favourite songs by Nevermore. Warrel Dane is a god, and he shows his incredible ability singing this song in (at least) 4 different tones, a range of voice that quickly passes from the ‘growling baritone’ of the intro to the falsetto of the verse, and to the double-tone full of passion and sorrow of the chorus. A really fantastic one!

Inside Four Walls: The anger against mind control operated by governments and religion gets inside you now: with explicit anti-americanism Dane describes how institutions bound our freedom “Inside four walls”. Drumming by Van Williams couldn’t have proposed a better rhythm for this song: speedy, strong, complex. The cymbals are tortured under a thousand beats, and riffage perfectly underlines the raging “Is this the American way... ... NOOO!” and the extraordinary solo which follows.

Evolution 169: A sorrowful ballad with a wonderful refrain that breaks the bursting anger of the previous song.

The River Dragon Has Come: In my opinion, the most overvalued song of DHiDW. It tells of this ‘unstoppable flood’ that will take everyone to his grave, without any chance of find shelter or salvation. Good idea (and a beautiful metaphor in the image of the river dragon coming), bad realized for a chorus that, repeated three times in the same ‘lamenting’ tone, really gets you bored.

The Heart Collector: It focus your attention on what the others expects from you, and how the pain in your life may make you listen to the ‘heart collector’s’ song and allurements, alias to feel the temptation to sell your heart, switching your brain off to obtain some kind of salvation from this anguish... Another perfect song!

Engines of Hate: The most insane and merciless song in this album. The fast rhythm is mystically broken by a very melodic parenthesis towards the end, and the result is a very strange feeling, even for a Nevermore creation. Maybe a precursor of Enemies of Reality...

The Sound of Silence: This is a Cover. A well realised one. Who can tell, listening to this psychedelic screams and riffs that the words have been written by Simon and Garfunkel? The theme is as gloomy as a true Nevermore one should be, and the music is wonderful!

Insignificant, am I? A slow intro that screaming grows in one of the powerful, saddest ballads I ever heard. Everything breaks down, everything becomes insignificant and sanity slips away with the evidence of man’s weaknesses and limits.

Believe in nothing: A beautiful and someway ‘happy’ classical guitar lead open this good ballad which shows the emptiness and the strange peace that the man reaches at the end of his journey, finally finding the inadequacy of every kind of dogmatism to find the answers he was searching. “Nothing is sacred when no one is saved / Nothing’s forever, so count your days / Nothing is final and no one is real / Pray for tomorrow and find you’re empty still” Maybe too much repetitive in its last section.

Dead Heart, in a Dead World: A dark introduction contributes to make us see and feel nothing but a cold, dead and empty world. This song is not perfect, because of the broken rhythm (used to represent the madness and anger or a man in which nothing is left) and its shortness (inadequate to such a symphony of suffering). But the solo and the chorus, which truly seems to come from an empty and dark cave are simply extraordinary. Sanity is slowly shed in tears on the ruin of the world, there is no saviour for man: he is definitely alone.
What more should I say but stand up and go to buy it??