Nightfall - Cassiopeia
To me, Nightfall has always been a band who’ve just slightly missed the mark. Perhaps overlooked, or more likely overshadowed by the Black Metal giants of their native Greece, I feel as though they did not leave the imprint they’d set out to. Our Editor will vehemently disagree, but I was never all that impressed by their Holy releases in the mid-to-early ’90s. Good records, not great ones… certainly nothing I remember 20 years later. My only real memory of Nightfall is a bad one — that batshit wacky Lesbian Show misadventure. However, it’s never too late to make amends. I thought the band showed legitimate promise of rebirth with Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, or whatever the fuck their last one was called, but Cassiopeia just might be the best thing they’ve ever done. No exaggeration, kiddies. If album #9 isn’t their finest hour, it’s at least their most well-rounded one. It seems they’ve hit their stride by settling into a very engaging mid-pace not unlike Rotting Christ circa A Dead Poem. A mid-pace from which they comfortably yield infectious melodic hooks, all-pro solos, and highly refined symphonic accentuation. Two decades in the game have honed the gruff bark of Efthimis Karadimas into a professionally precise weapon. By far the best he’s ever sounded, and by far the band’s most coherent and endearing songwriting to date. They’ve shut the door on those notorious oddballisms and have let in a rich flow of melodies to take their place. Melodies that permeate the regal headbangability of “Phaethon,” the darkened pummel of “Colonize Cultures” (replete with sick-ass breakdown), the shout-along pomp of “Hubris,” and the dejected majesty of “Akhenaton.” But “Stellar Parallax” is hands down the greatest song they’ve ever written. An ethereal battle anthem on a level of sincerity and sorrow they’d yet to achieve until now. Not all the bugs have been completely worked out, though. Songs like “Oberon & Titania” and “The Reptile Gods” feel jumbled and poorly transitioned. “Astropolis” could use a hook, and —despite some fantastic drumming— “Hyperion” is more like “Hyperi-yawn.” Still, Cassiopeia is the sound of a band rejuvenated, refocused, and above all, determined. I won’t be forgetting this one.
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