Enemies of Reality

Enemies of Reality is the fifth studio album by American progressive metal band Nevermore, released in 2003 by Century Media records.

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Now here's an album that would've been perfect, but ended up going down a grade due to the production. A lot of Nevermore fans complained about the album production by Kelly Gray, the former guitarist of Queensryche (in its alt-metal era) and that band's alt-metal spinoff Operation Mindcrime, and the producer of a couple Candlebox albums. Yeah, that guy's more of a pop-like alt-metal producer, and his production didn't fit well with a technical thrash album like this one, Enemies of Reality. The band chose Gray because they didn't have a big enough budget to rehire Andy Sneap who did the production in their previous album. Fortunately, Andy Sneap came back to remaster this album a couple years later and continued to produce, mix, and master Nevermore albums until the end of the band. What a hero!

Despite the poor original production, Enemies of Reality has managed to shake even the most unstable foundations of the metal scene. In this album, Nevermore continues to stay original and use what they have to create some awesome music. The technical thrash sound of Nevermore is one of many good examples of pure metal. The album title Enemies of Reality is provocative but exciting, and I like it! A suitable name for a metal album.

The album crashes in with the powerful thrashing destructive title track. The perfect heavy guitar riff would really blow your minds. Lead singer Warrel Dane's vocals work really well with this kind of music, singing with passion and anger lyrics about society and reality, especially in the catchy chorus filled with heaviness and melody. There's also some more nice tough guitar work with razor sharp soloing. So tremendous! After that song is "Ambivalent" with a steady tough rhythm and a nice heavy riff. "Never Purify" is another one of the best songs in the album. It comes straight to the first chorus. Then there are interesting melodies, and an extraordinary thrashy guitar solo. That's one of the perfect Nevermore songs! Next is the ballad "Tomorrow Turns Into Yesterday" which is in the soft darker side of Nevermore. Dane's voice is also very good for ballads like this one. Then it gets a little heavier with a nice guitar solo. However it's not really a classic ballad due to the heavy bursts of guitar playing and tearing solos.

"I Voyager" is a real headbanger, with some brutal Meshuggah-like 7-string riffing, all in under 6 minutes. The catchy crashing solo adds to the perfection of the song and once again shows that Jeff Loomis is one of the best guitarists in metal. The heavier thrash side of Nevermore continues with "Create the Infinite", which is nicely powerful and noisy, but doesn't reach the higher standards of the other songs. Now about this next song, who decided that there would be another depressive yet heavy classic song with gloomy dark guitar sounds? Nevermore, that's who, with "Who Decides?", which also has a short rough intro and outro.

"Noumenon" is not technically a ballad, but more of a psychedelic metal song with some of the greatest lyrics and melodies, and darker atmosphere. Then the album ends in a pure metal bang with "Seed Awakening", a thrash tune with great guitar work and riffs, pounding drumming, and a brief but still intense solo.

With this great album, Enemies of Reality, the band just keeps creating good metal tunes. There aren't as many songs as their previous album Dead Heart in a Dead World, but the songs are heavier and rawer despite the controversial production. Still another awesome work of metal! So I suggest you go find this album and listen to it, or the remastered version if you want the better production. When you focus more on the songs than production, that's 40 minutes of headbanging you'll surely enjoy....

Favorites: "Enemies of Reality", "Never Purify", "Tomorrow Turned Into Yesterday", "I Voyager", "Seed Awakening"

shadowdoom9 (Smith ghast4, shadowdoom9)

Reviewed July 2019 for Metal Academy