Neaera - Ours Is the Storm
The list of bands that don’t need to exist is feasibly long enough to wrap around the globe 667 times. Germany’s Neaera —first off, what the fuck is a neaera, how does one pronounce it, and why the fuck would anyone use it as a band name?— is assuredly on that list, though it’s hard to say exactly where, as determining such rank would be like trying to grade the quality of dust. I remember taking an interest to their 2005 debut The Rising Tide of Oblivion —Germany’s Metalcore/Melodeath scene was on fire in the early-to-mid ’00s, with the likes of Heaven Shall Burn, Caliban, Fall of Serenity, Six Reasons to Kill, Mourning Ends, and Maroon crushing pussies— but that interest was quickly extinguished by the artists formerly known as The Ninth Gate’s mundane unoriginality. Eight years later and these dudes still have yet to come up with their own idea. This is their 6th full-length over that stretch. That ought to tell you just how much thought goes into these stale, copycat efforts. More like THEIRS Is the Storm if you ask me. Listening to the vast majority of this record, I firmly believe this quintet would call themselves Heaven Shall Burn 2 if they legally could. Having Alexander Dietz fill in as a live guitarist in 2008 must have been the pinnacle of their collective existence. Certain riffs on “Walk with Fire,” “Back to the Soul,” and “Guardian of Ashes” indicate they’ve also been spinning some Amon Amarth recently, while “Decolonize the Mind” and “Ascend to Chaos” storm the At the Gates with the same conviction and bravado as the 99th guy who rhymed “fire” with “desire.” You won’t find a single arrangement here that you haven’t heard a thousand times before. It is not uncommon to forget who you’re listening to during a Neaera LP. The only thing that serves to set them apart does so in the bad way, that being the vocals of Benjamin Hilleke. He is a man of many voices, unfortunately none of them are worth a piss. They range from dull and forgettable (low grunts, his best Marcus Bischoff impersonation) to nails-on-a-fucking-chalkboard annoying (a high-pitch screech that sounds like an alley cat being sodomized with a blow-torch). Whenever the band actually does pull off their attempts at refurbished rehash —which is rare— Hilleke nullifies the vibe fast. For instance, I was going to add a point for the melancholic guitar flourishes on “My Night Is Starless,” but then had to subtract two for the god-awful clean singing on “Slaying the Wolf Within.” The world of extreme music simply does not require Neaera’s participation. Can’t anyone just be a fan?
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