Review Summary: Nevermore's latest effort is a strong release on it's own, even with some minor flaws. Sure, it won't top 'This Godless Endeavor', but still pick this album up anyways.
Nevermore is an amazing band and this is an amazing album. The follow up to This Godless Endeavor in 2005, it was an epic album and it was one of my top 5 of the album of the year for 2005, which means that this one really has a lot to live up to, especially considering it's been 5 years since their last album! Now, of course in that time frame, we've seen Jeff Loomis and Warrel Dane both do their own solo works which were both kind of okay, but the way I saw it was Warrel Dane's was kind of what Nevermore sound like without Jeff Loomis and it was kind of meh, and Jeff Loomis was kind of like 'Where's Warrel' and it was just unbalanced. The two are really meant to be together in my personal opinion and Nevermore is certainly the place where it's supposed to be.
Now, a little bit of history for you guys:
Warrel Dane got his start in the band Sanctuary and you can definitely see a lot of parallels between his stuff and Nevermore as well as the stuff in Sanctuary. He's been in this business for a very long time. It's been more than 20 years since Sanctuary released albums such as 'Into The Mirror Black' and the like.
Now, The Obsidian Conspiracy is a very solid album and really contains a lot of elements that you hear in albums such as 'This Godless Endeavor' and you still hear the hooks, you still hear the addicting little parts. Warrel Dance's voice still soars and it still pummels down to the very depths of his register, so he is still able to maintain that vocal prowess. The funny thing is though, a lot of people have told me "I can't get into Nevermore because of the voice. I love the music, but the voice is behbehbehbehbeh." Look, Warrel Dane is a fantastic vocalist, he has a lot of strengths and those strengths really should not become weaknesses because he's able to show a very high vocal register and a high vocal prowess and he also sinks deep. He's also a very talented singer live. The first time I saw them, he was kind of drunk, so he was kind of sub-par, but whenever he's sober and allright, the band kicks absolute ass live.
Now, this is a 10 track affair, clocking in at 44:41 and here are some of the songs, in fact I'll just give you all 10 of them.
We have 'The Termination Proclamation' which starts it off. It's a quick little opener and has that nice bold statement "This IS The Termination Proclamation!".
'Your Poison Throne' is track 2 and this is where the hooks start coming into play a little bit more.
'Moonrise (Through Mirrors Of Death)' is a great song. This first single off this album and I really love this track. I've been playing it over and over again.
'And The Maiden Spoke' is track number 4; the first really lengthy track on the album, but it's only a couple of seconds away from 5 minutes. You're not really gonna see an 8 minute long epic or a seven minute long epic like they did on 'This Godless Endeavor' and that's something a little bit disappointing but it's a good track in it's own right.
'Emptiness Unobstructed' is track 5 and 'The Blue Marble And The New Soul' is track number 6. The latter is the first of two slower songs where they really change the pace up a little bit. They kind of take it easy a little bit.
'Without Morals' is track number 7, 'The Day You Built The Wall' is track 8, 'She Comes In Colors' is track number 9. The latter is a very downtrodden and depressing, really slower track. Very good song, it's also the longest on the album at 5:31.
The title tack, 'The Obsidian Conspiracy' finishes it up at track 10.
Now, what do I think about this album as a whole? I've listened to it for about a week before this review and you know what, I have to play devil's advocate here. You follow up a great album such as 'This Godless Endeavor', you kind of have to look at both of them as separate entities. It's the correct way to do it because if you draw too many parallels and say "This doesn't really size up" you've really fallen into the trap of ignoring 'The Obsidian Conspiracy' as it's own body of work. For what it is, 'The Obsidian Conspiracy' is a very strong album and contains many classic Nevermore elements and it is very well done.
Now, here's the little slight issue I have with it:
It does have enough of a dynamicy where I can't say it gets a little bit cold, a little bit overdone where it really becomes a little bit monotonous. It does have enough dynamicy where that doesn't really happen. But, one thing I do kind of notice with this album is that with 'This Godless Endeavor', they really took a lot of ideas and molded it together. They really explored a lot of territory and I just think that for the 5 year period that they had between albums that maybe they would've done a little bit more. Is it really that big of a deal where it's going to bring down the score very. This is still a very strong release that has a lot of promising elements to it. This is an album when you don't like it the fist time, just keep listening to it because it's going to grow on you, it definitely gets stuck into your head to the point where you just listen to it again and again. I just really think that whenever you consider some of the classics of their catalog, whenever you listen to 'Dreaming Neon Black', 'Dead Heart In A Dead World' and 'This Godless Endeavor', whenever you see a little bit more and I think that this album lacks in that a little bit. Now, a lot of people like the album 'Enemies Of Reality' and surprisingly enough, that's one of their albums that I really couldn't get into very much and it's almost for the same reason; it just felt like it was really not mixed very well. In fact, the very first edition of it was mixed so poorly that they had to re-mix it and re-release it with Andy Sneap.
But, with this album, it's just very meticulously, very well produced. It's sound is perfect. Although, there aren't any problems there, it just seems to me that perhaps it's just 'there'. Plain and simple: if you size it up with the rest of the catalog, 'The Obsidian Conspiracy' is certainly up there, but it's just not as good as some of those legendary albums such as 'This Godless Endeavor' and 'Dreaming Neon Black'. It could just be me, but it's a solid 3.5/5. It's just one that may threaten the bottom part of the catalog, but it's not gonna be like 'This Godless Endeavor', where it's really gonna be right at the very top of the album of the year 2010 list.
Overall, I'm not gonna call this or label this as a disappointment because this is a great album. I still love listening to it and it may ascend the ranks, but we'll see.
