While they never seemed to make as big of a dent in North America, German melodic death metal band Neaera was a regular name on Metal Blade’sroster for almost a decade. With elements of Gothenburg melodeath and some metalcore aspects, each of their six albums had the right amount of heavy breakdowns and stunning melodic leads to keep me coming back. They remained consistent throughout, though 2007’s Armamentarium proved to be a peak as it was on this effort that they absolutely nailed a monstrous production and aggressive riffing from beginning to end. Neaera originally called it quits in 2015 but like most groups some one-off reunion shows turned into something permanent, and this has resulted in album number seven. The band’s kept this one self-titled and this feels appropriate as it captures the essence of what they’ve always been about.
Whether you’ve heard any of this group’s past discography or not there should still be an air of familiarity to this album, as it channels the best elements of the Gothenburg melodeath sound when it was starting to fuse with metalcore in the late 90s and early 2000s. Neaera’s gone back and forth with how much they incorporate breakdowns into their music, and this time around there’s plenty of them but they are used at just the right moments to make things as heavy as possible when it really counts. When they’re not slowing things down the instrumentals tend to go full steam ahead with crunchier riffing and all-out blasting that feels just as intense as ever, and when the melodies hit their peaks on tracks like “Carrier” and “Lifeless” they’re likely to hook anyone that’s a fan of the genre. One element that’s often plagued Neaera is the songwriting came across as a bit one-dimensional, as once you got the general idea of the faster riffs, breakdowns, and soaring leads, there wasn’t always enough to tell each song apart. This still holds true on the self-titled, but the quality of the riffs as the songs hit their choruses provides plenty of stand-out tracks that warrant repeat listens. There may be similar patterns, but these guys have it down to a near science and pull it off extremely well.
Neaera’s lineup hasn’t changed from before their disbandment and listening to their latest release you wouldn’t be able to guess that they had ever stopped making music. Benjamin Hilleke sounds exactly the same as I remember on material from fifteen years ago, and his screams and growls haven’t lost any of their intensity which works to the band’s advantage. Where a lot of melodic death metal and metalcore bands of this type in the mid-2000s had singers that could either do high or low ranges exclusively, Hilleke’s ability to seamlessly move between the two continues to be a huge selling point for their music. There’s an immense amount of force to every verse, and for the type of sound that Neaera is going for that’s a big plus.
Despite being away for five years (seven if you count albums), Neaera’s edge hasn’t been dulled in the slightest. While their self-titled still falls into some similar patterns by the end, their material is a great example of how to boil melodic death metal and metalcore down to its essential elements and do it right. The production values are razor sharp and recall the bottom heavy and dense nature of Armamentarium while the breakdowns and soaring melodies channel the best of what the band has done all along. Neaera is available from Metal Blade Records.
-Review by Chris Dahlberg
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