Melbourne’s Naberus return with a brand new album titled “Hollow” which sees the band progress even further with their now trademark melodic metal sound, incorporating more elements and an even stronger focus on groove which becomes apparent on further listening to each track.
Production wise Naberus have put out a thick slab of metal in the form of some real gutsy and slick recordings on “Hollow“. At 14 tracks that is important as an average production value would have really hurt the overall impact of this release although more importantly as we also touch on, the number of tracks is somewhat intimidating and dillutive. For those new to Naberus, their style would best be described as a combination of melodic death metal with a strong European sound mixed with some modern groove metal, emphasis on groove.
This thing grooves hard and pretty consistently too. While the djenty low end stuff does pop it’s head in every once in a while, particularly in the opening and closing tracks giving a slight Meshuggah feel, it also paves the way for that strong modern touch that lends itself well to the overall objective behind the band’s sound. It’s not overly used too and that’s another important factor in keeping the longevity of the songs quality with a good example being the title track which is one of the singles used as a preview to the album. The track is a good idea of what to expect on the album but not entirely the only thing that represents these collection of songs either as there are some diversity here to engage the listener.
Certainly the first half of the album has the gems, “Space To Breathe” is melo-death European inspired sounding in it’s nature whereas contrastingly, “Shadows” flows similarly to more American grooves like Devildriver and Trivium. The dynamics in the vocals has an emphasis on melody but there’s plenty of growls and roars for the heavier aspects and it’s fairly consistent quality wise too. “Webs” is an album highlight, the middle eastern tinged track with another groove based tempo spliced together with some speed and the right amount of double kicks is sure to hook the listeners right in for a variety of reasons.
Naberus step off the gas pedal just slightly with the more rock oriented and anthemic “I Disappear“, once again grooves nicely here but more on the guitars than the beat itself which showcases the strong songwriting that the band have to offer. From here however the album kind of plateau’s and the album starts to slowly suffer from the huge tracklist that was daunting from the get-go. The consistency never really waivers but the relentlessness of it all and the strength of the first half means that things start to blur and bleed in together and by the tail end of the album there’s a sense of relief that the end is near which is a shame as the songs themselves like the melodic groover “Seas Of Red” and the slightly thrashy “Fading” have some real weight to them but ultimately become almost lost in the whole mix.
Things come full circle with “The Depths” and the exhaustion level by this point has reached it’s peak. “Hollow” is a lot to take in and if you are in for the long hauls album wise, this will be right up your alley. There’s no denying this is a strong album and Naberus should be proud to have gone all the way and then some for it, just prepare yourself and your ears when you sit down to take all of this one in.
TRACKLIST
Slaves
Space To Breathe
Split In Two
Shadows
Webs
Hollow
I Disappear
The End
Seas Of Red
The Maze
My Favorite Memory
Fading
Burrow
The Depths
