A second album from German chainsaw death metallers Nightbearer following on very nicely from their excellent debut full length ‘Tales Of Sorcery And Death’ released in 2019. Whether you would say there is a progression on their sophomore is down to how you interpret it, granted the production is richer, bolder and maybe that chainsaw guitar sound has been upgraded but the songs still have that utter disembowelment that makes Nightbearer so damn effective and you notice it the moment ‘Wolves By My Side’ kicks things off.

The opener owes plenty to the Swedeath styling of course, the riffing swings towards to Entombed and Dismember but it also has that Gothenburg ability to instil melody that bands such as At The Gates utilised so effectively crafting that whole genre of music we all know about. Melody is at the heart of everything here, all the songs are saturated with it, but also ingrained with this band is a sense of unerring brutality as ‘The Dragon Reborn’ proves when it blasts in but uses an undercurrent of atmospheric posturing that is subtly meshed in, not just this track but a host of the others too, as I jotted a couple of acts they reminded me of such as Chapel Of Disease and Deserted Fear, not wholly just partially.

There were times during this album where the guitar work veered off into a far frostier aura and had me thinking there was a slight Dissection touch here and there, which the band may disagree with, and I am thinking about ‘The Somberlain’ material here and there with a minor marginal feathering but I felt it did work to add some impassioned and emotive touches to the songs, as I especially enjoyed ‘Forever In Darkness’ with its isolated guitar opening. The slower dense grisly pathway leads the song into some fine drum and bass work as those guitar inflections come to fore beautifully allowing the drum work to pound brilliantly.

‘A Shadowspawn’ has an eerie keyboard horror flick beginning, the atmospherics lead into a cool snare roll where the pace steps up and the kick drums knock out a decent pattern for you to latch onto before the excellent riff break. That Dissection touch reappears on ‘Where No Wind Ever Blows and like I said, it is a feathering, like a sonic vignette on the tunes deathly bludgeoning where it has atmospherics placed towards the end and is one of the standouts of the album.

Blasting in is ‘A Conquest In Blood’, a bruising tune if ever there was one as the guitar work has hefty Dismember traits without any cloning of course, the song is a fine example of how to marry up brutality with melody superbly. The title track is immense, a seven minute plus exploration of ominous deathly dramatics with harsh vocals alternating with the deeper style as the calm opening builds sequentially to the expected abrupt start. The colossal double bass is fabulous, a real turning point in the song as it flows down monstrously dense corridors of power offering tons of tempo dynamics and epic lead work. The album has a bonus tune called ‘Doom, Death, Desolation’ which may as well have been incorporated into the body of the album because the title track should have closed the release because it is so good but as a bonus song it is decent in its own right, typically gnarly Swedeath but after the epic title track it just couldn’t follow it if truth be told.

A fantastic album by Germany’s Nightbearer one that fans of death metal should be absolutely buying without hesitation whether you’re into old or new school death metal, it really shouldn’t matter.

(9/10 Martin Harris)

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https://nightbearer.bandcamp.com/album/ghosts-of-a-darkness-to-come