Band:	Assailant
Album:	Nemesis Within
Style:	Progressive power metal
Release date:	2006
A review by:	Jeff

01. Lies
02. Buried Alive
03. Edge Of Forever
04. Downward Spiral
05. Until The End
06. Eternal
07. Mental State
08. Shattered
09. Tomorrow
10. Vanily Unfolds
11. My Awakening

The city of Umea, Sweden, is a bit like the Gothenburg of Heavy Metal and if they had bands like Nocturnal Rites or Persuader in the past, they have now a new young combo, Assailant. Just to say it, Oskar Norberg one of the guitarists of the band is the little brother of Nils Norberg (Nocturnal Rites) and Emil Norberg (Persuader) so if you didn't know that Metal is a big family? you have a nice proof now right?

If the album starts with a bad song that sounds some like some average Finnish Power totally destroyed by some bad lines of keyboards, the others songs are a lot more interesting. Actually Assailant plays a mix between Metal Core and European Power Metal and if it's not so easy to find such productions it's on the other hand really cool to see that some young bands know how to mix correctly these two really different musics. The opposition between the aggressive songs like "Edge Of Forever" (not so far away of Melodic Death on a side) and the classic Power Metal ones like "Buried Alive" is really good.

Also the voice of Peder Sundqvist is not so bad because if he is able to sing with a nice voice a la Tomas Englund, he is also able to sing with a pure Hardcore one (like on "Until The End") and it's really refreshing to have such contradiction on an album. Same remark with the others musicians who are all really good too.

But to sum up the only problem of this album is that it is maybe a bit linear on a side. The songs are good yes (except the first one) but we don't have a lot of progression during the album. I cannot blame the quality of the CD but I hope that our guys will be able in the future to add some different particularities in each songs because right now when you listen to one of them, you have the feeling that you're listening the precedent one.

"Nemesis Within" isn't perfect and the band still need to improve its music but there is something with these guys and I'm quite sure that their music will be able to please a lot of Metalheads. For sure, I think that the ones who like the new wave of US Metal and who are bored by classic European Power should try this album, because this is probably the perfect mix between our European music and US Metal?