Nerve - Fracture (2013) (8/10)

NERVE is a Technical Death Metal band from Genoa in Italy that just released its third output entitled “Fracture” with the seventy-eighth issue of the famous French Metallian magazine. While the band is composed by a lot of talented musicians their dystopian sound needs some time to grow and is sometimes hard to digest.

The problem is that the band kicks off the record a little bit too straight with the not very well chosen opener “Antichrist” that makes you think that this band just wants to play noisy and aggressive music. The next few songs are not that convincing as well.

The band only shows later that they are more than an aggressive bunch of musicians. The complex “Scream” surprises with an excellent mixture of powerful harsh vocals and charismatic clean vocals as well as with a very dominating bass guitar play and develops a dystopian atmosphere with surprising atmospheric breaks where MARTYR seems to meet ICED EARTH but also names like DAGOBA or GOJIRA come to my mind from time to time.

The following instrumental “Al-Dajjal” introduces us in a very dark and almost industrial way to Arabian folklore which grabbed my attention. The closing instrumental “The Reign Of Thousand Years” finishes the album on an epic and calm note and could easily fit on a movie soundtrack. While listening to this song, I’ve almost felt like walking on a blood-red battlefield covered by the soldiers’ bodies.

The sometimes almost Groove Metal driven “Revelations” with its dystopian VOIVOD riffs and its pitiless bass guitar play proves us then that the record is getting better and better and that the first impressions turned out to be wrong.

“Neither Here Nor There” which is one of the catchier tracks along with the almost melancholic “Lenny Nero” then surprises with smooth acoustic guitar parts in the middle section. “Zero” starts with calm passages that would rather fit to KATATONIA or OPETH before a very technical Extreme Metal track kicks off. The more and the longer you listen to the album, the better it gets if you care for dystopian Extreme Metal.

After a weak start with the first three tracks, NERVE finally happen to present us one of the most original and technically convincing Extreme Metal releases of the year with “Fracture”. It doesn't beat the last DAGOBA release but it turns out to not being a far call from it either. Don’t get fooled by your first impressions and discover a truly decent release that you can also check out on the band’s official Bandcamp presence:http://nerveofficial.bandcamp.com/album/fracture

(Online August 25, 2013)