Night In Gales – Five Scars

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Night In Gales isn’t exactly a household name in melodeath the same way the bands of the Swedish and Finnish movements are, yet the German band’s history can be traced back to the mid-90s. The band released several albums that were rather rough around the edges, but added more traditional heavy metal and thrash influences and had much stronger melodies, despite firmly keeping to harsh vocals. Comparisons with Arch Enemy, who happened to be producing their earlier albums at the same time Night In Gales were originally around, aren’t entirely unfounded. Five Scars is the band’s long overdue comeback album, ten years after their fourth album Necrodynamic. After making many rough sounding albums, Five Scars sees a much more clean and modern sound and brings the band into the current era. To an extent this does make the band sound less identifiable, and much more in line with the general melodeath flock, although it undeniably has a much more appealing sound. The band still sound much more progressive when compared to the current generation – the sound is certainly familiar melodeath, but large melodic parts (such as the near doomy start to The Tides of November) with good use of clean vocals and slower riffs give the album an air of intelligence. Given the amount of bands in the melodeath genre and the different developmental strains the genre has, one might’ve expected Night In Gales to have sounded dated this long since their last album, but it still sounds surprisingly creative and innovative. It isn’t a perfect album by any means, but a great comeback record regardless, hopefully it won’t be another ten years until the next.

Written by James Donovan
More: 2011, Albums, Death Metal, Quick.Play Reviews, Night In Gales