Not one to which I can see me returning to in a hurry. It is the lack of focus and direction which hurts this album, which repeated plays do nothing to address, as all I kept wondering when I was playing it was what were they thinking? They have definitely moved much further into the Opeth direction, but without the direction that Mikael Г…kerfeldt is able to display. It is just a shame there are some spoken/gently sung vocals prior to that (and afterwards) which should have been gently erased as all they do is make the listener wonder what on earth are the band playing at. Tag: Nailed To Obscurity Live report DARK TRANQUILLITY, ENSIFERUM, NAILED TO OBSCURITY & THE LEGION:GHOST, Markthalle, Hamburg April 13th, 2022 EQUILIBRIUM. Take the introduction to вЂњThe Aberrant HostвЂќ for example, it is really promising and exciting and when the death growls come in the band are doing a really good power metal/symphonic metal take underneath. Most of the songs have strong sections, but few carry that through the whole length. It feels padded and needed a strong producer to not only capture the sound (which is excellent, probably the best thing about the whole album), but also assist them in being more direct.

The death metal really only works with the vocals as the guitars arenвЂ™t punchy enough, while the soft gentle metalcore doesnвЂ™t get me worked up at all and the more progressive segments just makes one believe they donвЂ™t really know what they want to achieve. They have always been known for channelling the likes of Opeth and Katatonia, but whereas both those bands (mostly) stay on track and deliver, what we have here is an album which is veering between multiple genres and consequently not hitting any of them.

Back with their fourth album, German melodic death metal act Nailed to Obscurity had a lot to live up to after the success of their last release, вЂKing DelusionвЂ™, and I think it is safe to say they have somewhat missed the mark.

Nailed to obscurity