Nightside Eclipse
The End Of Eternity
6.1
To many metalheads, the words “nightside” and “eclipse” immediately conjure thoughts of Emperor’s lofty debut LP, In The Nightside Eclipse. Friends, this little demo from Italy’s Nightside Eclipse is about as close to Emperor’s brand of black metal as Glenn Benton is to Our Lord and Savior. We’re talking polar ends of the metal spectrum, folks. The End of Eternity delivers four songs of keyboard-soaked, fret-molesting, vocal-wailing, swing-your-guitar-over-your-shoulder styled powAAAHHHH metal. So, after tossing my corpse paint over the ol’ shoulder in favor of my power metal helm, I quickly switched gears and prepared myself for an entirely different metal journey - one with fairly mixed results...
First and foremost, there’s nothing on The End of Eternity that any fan of the genre hasn’t heard before, or even heard done better, but it does show potential, which is obviously imperative when dealing with demos. The production is damned impressive, and does a fine job of cleanly spotlighting the various instrumental elements as they bubble forth throughout the recording’s 23-minutes. The songs have a nice, smooth flow, and feature some very tactfully crafted guitar/keyboard battles that immediately bring to mind a simpler version of Rising Force era Malmsteen, with quite a bit of European power metal pomp and flair thrown in for good measure. I personally feel the demo hits its peak with the second track, “Livin’ In A Dream”, despite the fact it eventually morphs into a sentimental, smarmy ballad. The tune starts off with a later-era Iron Maiden flavor, primarily because of the ethereal, sweeping keyboards in the background, and eventually settles into your brain with quite the catchy chorus.
Where Nightside Eclipse falls flat (ahem), is in the vocal department. The guy’s natural delivery is actually quite solid, but he tries to do too much too often, resulting in some fairly erratic delivery and flat notes from time to time, especially on track three, “A Reason To Live”. He also needs to be taken down a couple notches in the mix to better showcase what should be the recording’s focal point; the first-class lead guitar work.
In the end, The End of Eternity is a far cry from anything I’d consider essential listening, but it does show talent and promise from this young, Italian band. I’d love to be able to point readers to a link providing samples, but apparently Nightside Eclipse’s website recently went down, making it quite difficult for power metal fans to find out more information and form their own opinions. Perhaps one of the band members will eventually pop by and enlighten us as to where they’ve gone, or if they’re even still a band.
