For all the time of existence since 1991 Nightfall have been completely changed a couple of times: genres, line-ups, labels, you name it. Even the live performance – at some moment Efthimis (vocalist, mastermind and the only original member in the band today) declared that Nightfall will remain only as a studio band without doing any live shows. However, that thing changed as well. “We come in seasons, like Netflix,” said Efthimis once. So now we have a continuation of a newest “season” – the new effort called Children Of Eve.
The return to the active musical life happened in 2020, when Nightfall signed a deal with Season Of Mist. In 2021 was released At Night We Pray, the first album in eight years. The line-up got stronger with bassist Vasiliki Biza, drummer Fotis Benardo and guitarist Kostas Kyriakopoulos; and after satisfying the hunger for the stage, the band went to the studio to write and record a new longplay. And if the previous album was quite personal for Efthimis – it’s about depression, worries, inner demons and how do you live with that – Children Of Eve rises much more existential questions. “It’s an album about how we come through pain, how we live with pain and how we die in pain,” tells vocalist. The album touches on the subject of faith, religion, church and a confrontation between man and enormous institution. “Anger was the root,” says Efthimis. “Faith is the personal matter but it can become a dirty business.” But don’t take it a set of anticlerical “priests are lying, burn your local church” clichés, it’s much deeper than that. And it’s conceptual, as far as I can tell.
That is shown in the atmospheric intro for the opener “I Hate”, where female voice reads the name of the songs, which made a short narrative: “I hate the cannibal lurking inside my head, seeking revenge etc…” Right after that a pummeling riff hits you along with potent drumming and malicious growls. Later the tempo increases and we got a blackened death metal track but some keyboards and choirs added in chorus turn this song into dark and epic canvas. The same happens in “The Cannibal’, where death metal brutality changes with quite infectious chorus and in “Lurking” – here we have some epic synths in bridge.
In this album the band managed to write a lot of melodic, atmospheric and catchy choruses, joined them with brutal riffs. Such contrast makes the song interesting, forcing you to listen to the songs more and more. The shifts between riffs and themes are sharp sometimes but it’s not something rejecting and there is no feeling that the elements are barely combined.
“Inside My Head” starts slow and viscous, very doomy but increase the tempo slowly. The chorus is epic and the solo is great, with endless double-bass in the background. Doom can be also found in “For The Expelled Ones”; moreover, there’s a clear divide for doom and death, nearly without mixing those elements. Oh, the drums’ patterns here are good, too.
“Seeking Revenge” also starts with female vocals, synth and some catchy harmony. Later the music turns into death metal, of course, but symphonic elements make the song epic and even cinematic. Such things can be heard on Cassiopeia but here Nightfall made a huge step forward as for the songwriting and sound as well. “With Outlandish Desire To Disobey” starts with female vocals too and some odd gothic or even modern metal intro. The vocals are less expressive than it was on “I Hate” or “Seeking Revenge”, by the way, but the chorus fixes it, adding Efthimis’ extreme vocals too. Well, I can live with this but the transitions from gothic to blackened death, pace changing and everything are to sharp and rough for me.
The avalanche of death metal riffs gets band in “The Traders Of Anathema” – just fast pace and brutality, without melody. However, the song slows down somewhere in the middle just to transform into gothic metal, add some tremolo riff, increase tempo, freeze for a second and get back into uncompromised death metal. Again, the transitions are pretty sharp here but unlike the previous track, this one feels like a one solid piece.
The most somber track in Children Of Eve is “The Makhaira Of The Deceiver”. Slow, tragic, with short and fierce bursts of drums and synths in the end. The atmosphere is fomented with female vocals and children screams too, and in the end, it turns into awesome canvas, which will end the album perfectly but we have one more song, “Christian Svengali.” It’s good on its own: brutal riffs, melodious chorus with symphonic elements and some tremolo bridge with double-bass and keyboards play the main melody atop. But it feels like it’s a bit weaker against the previous song.
Nevertheless, despite some debatable moments, the album is great. Powerful, profound and enthralling, it makes you to listen to it again, to dive deep into lyrics, ask questions and argue with authors. That means Nightfall did their job splendidly. Well, if At Night We Pray was testing the water album (in a way, yes), with the new one the band is both feet on the ground; confident and still hungry for the music. It’s good to have them back.
Children Of Eve will be released on May, 2nd via Season Of Mist.
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