NightShade – “An Endless Vision”

With a line-up that boasts a combination of both French and American cultures, it’d be fair to expect An Endless Vision to sound like the bastard offspring of both the European and American metal scenes and, as the clinical, juddering riffage of opener “Amiss Desire” spits this album into life, it’s apparent that NightShade have in fact taken elements from both scenes and melded them together into an impressive end product.

Of course, like most stuff spat out from this genre these days, there is little particularly groundbreaking on An Endless Vision, there is nothing on here that you won’t have already heard but there is something likeable about the polished, pristine djent-inspired European metalcore hybrid that stops you from hitting the stop button. An immaculate mixing job by metal/deathcore producer extraordinaire, Jason Suecof goes some way to beefing up their sound but, those of you who’ve heard work on the Trivium and Whitechapel albums, amongst others, will be expecting nothing less.

However, it’s not this that makes An Endless Vision all that more appealing. No, I think it is more to do with the fact that, throughout the course of An Endless Vision, there are moments when you are clearly listening to a band on top of their game. Whether it is the intricate Euro-metal inspirations weaving alongside the choppy djent riffage (“Make Up Your Mind”), the blasts of modern deathcore peppered throughout the album or the waves of infectious electronica, An Endless Vision is a polished, impressive piece of work by a band who know their onions.

Now, whether or not you want another album like this in your collection is down to how much of an obsessive you are for the genre. While there is enough amongst the (rather humungous) grooves of tracks like “Apathy” to keep even hardened listeners mildly interested, there is always a niggling feeling running in the back of your mind that you’ve heard good chunks of it before.

Track Listing:

01. Amiss Desire
02. Wasteful Ways
03. Kleos
04. Make Up Your Mind
05. Apathy
06. Betrayal
07. Contemporary Ascendancy
08. Virtue In Hand
09. Creepy Crawlies
10. Hope Is What Makes Us Strong

Run Time: 32:43
Release Date: April 30, 2013

Check out the song “Betrayal”