NEVERMORE – In Memory [Reissue]

This review will pick up where the review of the re-release of Nevermore’ s first album here stopped, so if you are interested in the re-releases it would be recommended to start there.

This EP was released to have some new stuff to sell when Nevermore would go on their first European tour. The writing process was short, and these tracks were combined with the songs of the following album, The Politics Of Ecstasy. Knowing this, it is astonishing that those two releases have a very different feel. In Memory is melancholic, and ballad-esque, and contains three tracks (out of five songs!) that are slow, and maybe allowed fans to catch a glimpse of the future of Nevermore, as there are a few later tunes from Dreaming Neon Black or Dead Heart In A Dead World that seem to be the exact descendants of the spirit of In Memory. This is most notably in “The Sorrowed Man,” but also the title track and the slightly heavier, but not less emotional, “Matricide,” which sounds like Nevermore in session with Dead Soul Tribe.

The other two tracks are quite different. “Optimist Or Pessimist” would be a highlight on any album, and it reflects the new style Nevermore would indulge during the years to come: Heavy, but still Melodic Progressive Thrash. This track was the closest idea to what the following album would sound like… only fans did not know that back then. The last track to talk about on the original EP was a cover version, and a quite unexpected one. England’s Bauhaus is hardly known to most Metalheads, but the Nevermore arrangement proved that their tracks could easily be made into Metal songs that even transported the Nevermore feel!

Overall, In Memory is in retrospect an essential release for fans of the band and style. The re-release offers an additional value by containing liner notes — only slightly more uninteresting than on the debut re-release — and five demo tracks of songs that would appear on the sophomore Politics Of Ecstasy album. The quality of the songs, recording, and mastering is quite good, and they would be happily discovered gems were they not all on the next album. So, this EP does not offer any new tracks, and comparing the demos to the final recorded versions of the songs reveals a few differences, the most in “42147,” but that is probably only important to the real die hard fans.

The re-release is on the shelves for the full album price right now, and that feels wrong. If one already has the original release, it is difficult to recommend the purchase as there is nothing really new to discover. If one does not have the EP at all, this is an asset to any collection. But, the price of a normal EP should be the benchmark for the money one should spend, although in the end no one would want to miss the four great Nevermore compositions on this disc.