NOVA ART – Follow Yourself

The new Follow Yourself is not just a Progressive Metal album. Its creators, the Russian Metal band Nova Art, with their new release being under their new label My Kingdom Music, have used many elements in order to spice up their material into being challenging and complex.

After listening to Follow Yourself its safe to say that the blending of Heavy Metal, Goth, Prog and Dark Wave works only if the band knows how to handle its complexity and diversity.

Most of the running influences behind the band originated in bands like Opeth, late era of Amorphis, late Paradise Lost (especially after hearing Nova Art’s vocalist, Andrew Nova, performing similar to Nick Holmes in many occasions on the album) , bits of Dream Theater and more Alternative approaches such as A Perfect Circle. For Nova Art the mentioned blend is rather old news. They have been working to perfect themselves by playing this sort of obscurity for nine years now and Follow Yourself is a milestone on their way to become highly rated Metal composers.

The first amazing thing, besides the complex approach, is the massive and impressive production. Nova Art were working with Kohie Kohlmannslehner in the highly known studio, Kohlekeller, a place where acts such as Sieges Even and Crematory recorded their material. The overall sound generated in Follow Yourself is flawless, accurate and even mesmerizing, most of the credit can be credited to the keyboards, while biting you with sharp teeth of raw power (especially the guitars).

For those of you who pay attention to accents, Nova Art are Russian based, so probably many will recognize that Nova and female singer, Lida Emelyanova, that joins in on some of the songs, have some issues with it. However, for most of the way both, especially Nova, are performing with greatness. Take a listen to “Deception World” and you won’t recognize Nova singing because this track is way different from the opening track, “Don’t Follow The Crowd”, which is yet another mind blower.  Aside from the vocals, the band’s dark and emotive music has many commemorative moments like the instrumentals “Just Raining” and the amazing “2-35 Before The Roar”. The latter presents Dark Wave music with acoustic rhythm, both create a captivating anthem of softness and purity.

Nevertheless, Nova Art are at times “rough” and occasionally they will show that they can reach to some extremely good levels like in “Sense Of Life” , a part of the “Deliverance” trilogy, and “Knowledge Garden”.  Summarizing, Nova Art can be soft and atmospheric, yet they can also make you bang your head with heavy anthems and demonstrate true anger. Their musical diversity and their creative minds will surely boost them in the future to come.
Other highlights worth mentioning are “Follow Yourself” and “Would My Soul…”.