# 42: Nevermore - Dead Heart In A Dead World2000 - Heavy/Thrash/Progressive/Death Metal - Washingston, USA In the last list this album was featured along with the debut album by the same band, and well, while “Nevermore” fell into oblivion, Dead Heart In A Dead World managed to survive. Why?
BECAUSE IT’S DEAD HEART IN A DEAD WORLD. There’s something about this band that I really enjoy, but I can’t exactly pinpoint what it is. Maybe it’s the songwriting style, maybe it’s the riffs and the drum work, hell, maybe it’s the guitar tuning. A# standard man. Well, whatever, the point is, that I love Nevermore and it’s one band that no matter what mood I’m in, I can listen. There are very few bands like these in my book, so that’s a great thing.
Warrel Dane’s vocals really adjusted by this point, in the past he used to have vocal lines that didn’t fit in the song sometimes, but here? Everything is coherent and awesome-sounding. I love this guy’s voice, it’s evil and eerie but incredibly melanchonic and touching at the same time, very particular. Well, of course, Jeff Loomis is the master here, he wrote everything along with the other guitar mate Jason L. Brown. The rhythm section is provided by Van Williams, a great groovy man on drums, and on bass Jim Sheppard, which is also in Sanctuary, Warrel’s other band. Well now, Warrel’s only band :C
This album features typical Nevermore metal. A big mix of subgenres. We have straight heavy, thrash, prog and death metal influences in the same album. I’m in love with each and every riff in this record, they are the way I like them: heavy, hard-hitting, and slightly wacky.
The tracklist consists of 11 songs:
Narcosynthesis kicks things off with a hard hitting double bass riff, which is a bit all over the place admittedly, but everything adjusts as soon as the djenty riff kicks in. I love the lyrics to this song, I interpreted them as a drug person calling out for help.
We Disintegrate continues the record with a similar speed, with a succession of riffs, all memorable. I like the chorus, Warrel here uses various vocal styles, passing from a deep register to a high falsetto. It has quite a strange outro though, they could’ve done better than that.
Inside Four Walls is a classic. A straight heavy tune, with cool harmonics placement and a memorable anthemic chorus. Also, that bridge hypes me up everytime.
Evolution 169 slows things down quite a bit, but that doesn’t mean it’s not heavy. Nope, still heavy. I love the outro, it has a cool message:
“Don’t set your mind to one side”. Warrel vocals are pretty helpless in this one, and deep too.
The River Dragon Has Come is probably my favorite tune out of this album. It starts with a clean arpeggio and soon everything goes nuts with one of the heaviest riffs in the record. I love the verses riff figure. 0. 0. 0-0. *pause* 0-0-0. 0000. It’s so groovy, and it has balls. The bridge is another section where all hell breaks loose, but not in a fast way, there’s just scales, but they create a great dark and doom-y mood.
The Heart Collector is a powerful power ballad (look at that poor writing :rolling), with one moving chorus and touching topic. I think it talks about a man that in order to feel any good emotion, has to steal other people’s hearts. The problem with Nevermore’s ballads is that they all kinda sound the same… I mean The Sanity Assassin, this one, Sentient 6.. all pretty similar. Well, that doesn’t mean they’re not great, because they truly are. Sentient 6 especially. The album goes on with
Engines Of Hate, a fun song with lyrics that I don’t know if they are to be taken seriously or not (don’t read ‘em out loud
). Following is a peculiar track,
The Sound Of Silence, and it’s a metal reindition of the classic Simon & Garfunkel track. And out of all tracks in the record, this is where the guys decided to freak the hell out and spit some of the heaviest and meanest shit in Nevermore’s discography. Minor complaint is : why didn’t you make this an actual song of yours? Yeah, it’s that different from the original, and I think the lyrics don’t quite fit the music. Well, whatever, it’s a nice experiment at least.
Insignificant is probably my least favorite song in the album. It’s an ok ballad (strange placement since it’s before another power ballad), with a great vocal melody, but IMO it doesn’t quite stand out compared to the rest of the album. Putting
Believe In Nothing next kinda kills the pace of the album, two ballads in a row are not a great thing to do. Especially when they are the least interesting songs on the record. This song was released as a single and was covered a couple of times too, so it has some recognition. The lyrics are actually great, the solo is nice, but the rest? A bit meh. But let’s come to the closing tune, the title track,
Dead Heart In A Dead World, a war-centered piece, with an incredibly depressing intro, that soon explodes in a fast-paced destruction and possibly my favorite chorus in the whole album. Great closing track.
So, overall, this album starts awesomely, it kinda loses itself towards the end with Insignificant and Believe In Nothing, but still, it’s a great listen, and it’s also fun to play, like most of Nevermore’s material (I Voyager is a pain in the ass D:)
Favorites: Narcosythesis, Inside Four Walls, The River Dragon Has Come, The Sound Of Silence, Dead Heart In A Dead World