In recent years there has been a very small, almost blurry line that divides melodic death metal and the now big metalcore movement; so am I implying that Nightrage is metalcore now! No off course not, but they do flirt with it, they come so close that if it wasn’t for the very distinctive Marios Iliopoulos guitar work this band could be compare to As I Lay Dying… By the way I like AILD but they are not death metal no matter how many bands influence them in their earlier years; all right back to Nightrage, “A New Disease is Born” is Jimmie Strimell’s debut after the man made god Tomas Lindberg left the band a couple of years back, as well as Firewind guitar wiz Gus G, so what we have here is the rebirth of a once proclaimed by the critics “At the Gates” clone into a new and totally solid outfit that wants to create melodic, angry and fast as hell death metal, something they manage to pull with this album, but like I say before Strimell has a certain hardcore approach to the vocals those giving the album that particular “smell”.

Iliopoulos has a very personal, like mention before distinctive way on writing and driving his riffs, melodic, precise and plain great really, this has really been the factor that has driven Nightrage from the underground into the mainstream, landing them a deal with Century Media back in 2002, the bad thing is that for some reason Mr. Iliopoulos guitar appears hidden in some tracks, and his riffs sort of wait just for the solo segments to emerge, not bad just not as consistence as they did in the past, is like they tried to put Jimmie on top of everything for the fans to get to know him, good strategy but it really delegated some of the best aspects of Marios song writing ability to serve as an entrance to Strimell screams and mellow vocal parts, which by the way a very well done.

The album explodes in the very beginning not giving you any chance of preparing yourself for the attack, a very good solid track, since that fast start Nightrage explores melodies, different tempos and vocal styles demonstrating the wide range that Jimmie is bringing to the band. Like I mention at the beginning of the review, at first listen it will sound very metalcore influenced to you, but as the spins start to increase, you will began to understand better the rhythms and tempos that Nightrage brings this time around, perhaps one song that really brought me that feeling of progression while maintaining their essence was De-Fame, were the band allows Marios to carry the song with a precision and a catchy riffs that grows into a great solo; very NIGHTRAGE style song.

Overall this is a very good album, an album that will attract not only Arch Enemy, In Flames, Soilwork fans, but because of that singular guitar from Marios can and will make some noise between the more “die hard” death fans.