From what I understand, Deathrite used to play some high octane grind-infused death metal, but if that's the case then Nightmares Reign is a huge departure for them. Instead of putting the pedal to the floor and smoking face, this album seems content to grind only in the sense that it drags on and on and never raises past a level of "alright I guess" every once in a while.
I feel like my issue here is the same one I had with Genocide Pact's new album, because it sounds like it's always building towards a moment where the band is gonna go fucking nuts but it just never comes to pass. The vast, vast majority of this album comfortably sits in a mid-paced trench and never really tries to hit any other mood beyond background competency. There are a lot of slow d-beats and 100bpm riffs that revel in overt simplicity, which is fine because my unending love of Motorhead should prove that I don't think technicality is anything approaching a necessity. The problem is that there's no adrenaline, no fire, no excitement. Nobody listens to death metal because they want to hear something pedestrian. That's what Nightmares Reign is. It's very inoffensive and pedestrian, and it's more likely to bore your grandmother than shock her with the inherent depravity and violence of death metal. I've skimmed some reviews around the internet for this album, since it's the band's fourth full length and I'm obviously coming into this with no knowledge of their previous work, and most people are acknowledging this as a stark departure from their roots of furious sub-3 minute blast attacks, and all that makes me want to do is check out their earlier stuff, because if this is a new direction, it's a very definitive flop in my eyes. Even the one short song, "Bloodlust" just feels like one of the longer boring songs chopped in half instead of a faster and more focused maiming. The average track length sits around five minutes if you exclude the two long ones, "Demon Soul" and "Temptation Calls", which sit around seven and a half and nine and a half minutes respectively. Every last one of these tracks, even the average ones, feel like they only have two minutes worth of ideas stretched out to comparatively marathon lengths.
There are good things about this. The production is muddy in an old-school sense and it has a massive booming low end, which is really nice. There are actual moments of life in the intro of "Demon Souls", roughly two minutes into "Devil's Poison" (after what feels like a two minute soundcheck), and the sole above average track, "Appetite for Murder". That's really all the praise I can give it though. No instrumental moments stand out, the percussion is weak and uninspired, the vocals are dime-a-dozen gruff yells, the riffs are so lifeless that I'm not confident they could pass a captcha, it's just very unexciting and bland from start to finish. Is there such a thing as a reverse shot in the arm? Because that's what this sounds like. It sounds like the vaguely crusty death metal of something like Black Breath in their heyday with half of the blood drained out of their bodies. I don't want to listen to something sedated and drowsy, and if they wanted to turn the tempo down, they should have focused more on crushing, oppressive doom passages. Right here, all we really have is "slow death metal", and that sounds about as exciting as a pedicure.
RATING: 37%
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