ALIVE AGAIN: THE BREATHING SHADOW PART IV

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The fourth album from Swedish band Nightingale is called Alive Again: the Breathing Shadow part IV. As you can see from the title this is the fourth part of a concept story that has been going on since their debut. I must say I was never captured by the ghost story that Nightingale used so many albums completing, but their music is another story. Nightingale is one of Swedish musician Dan Swanö´s many projects. He started out being the frontman in the Swedish old school death metal band Edge of Sanity and has since been involved in many projects and bands both as a musician and as a producer. Some of the bands he has been involved in besides Edge of Sanity and Nightingale are: Pan-Thy-Monium, Unicorn, Second Sky, Bloodbath, Katatonia, Fleshcrawl, Abruptum, Maceration...etc..etc.

Nightingale started out as a one man project band on the debut The Breathing Shadow while the lineup was upgraded with a lead guitarist ( Dan´s brother Tom Nouga) on the second album The Closing Chronichles. On the third album called I, Nightingale was almost a real band with the addition of a drummer and a bassist and the transformation was complete for this fourth album. This album is a real band effort even though the music is mainly written by Dan Swanö.

The music lies somewhere between Neo prog and seventies hard rock. I know this is listed as progressive metal but I´m sure that most lovers of that genre will be a bit disappointed with this album. It´s very soft and not very technical. The strenght of Nightingale lies in their memorable and melodic song writing and Dan Swanö´s beautiful voice not in technical playing and showing of virtuosic skills. There are very beautiful songs on Alive Again: the Breathing Shadow part IV. All songs are in fact very good and it´s hard to name a highlight as the quality is very high throughout the album. I´ll mention the four first songs as they are very good examples of how Nightingale sounds and the epic Eternal for it´s majestic theme. The last song Forever and Ever is also worth mentioning as it is a great song too with some varied parts. Most songs have hard rocking riffs with neo progressive keyboard parts on top and of course the beautiful vocal parts from Dan Swanö.

The musicianship is good and it´s great to hear that Nightingale is now a real band. I think it shows.

The production is good and forgotten is the bad production from the previous album which almost ruined that one.

I´ve been a fan of Nightingale and Edge of Sanity from the start ( I remember listening to the demo tapes from Edge of Sanity in the early nineties) and this is definitely one of the more enjoyable releases from Dan Swanö so far. The hard rock tendencies that are introduced on Alive Again: the Breathing Shadow part IV would be investigated further on subsequent releases while the symphonic element would be toned down a bit. So depending on which part of Nightingale´s sound you like the most you´ll be either happy or sad with that development. All the elements in Nightingale´s sound are well represented on Alive Again: the Breathing Shadow part IV though and that makes for an enjoyable listen IMO. I´ll rate Alive Again: the Breathing Shadow part IV 4 stars. I find it very beatiful.

The decline of Nightingale goes on. If Alive Again proves one thing it is the apparent lack of Dan Swanö to come up with anything original and challenging. It is a collection of uninspired, formulaic and commercial songs. The previous album at least succeeded to be better then Asia's debut, but this one is possibly worse.

The thing that bothers me with Alive Again is that it fools the fans by implicitly promising a return to old glory, thematically the album hints at the first two Nightingale albums and even reprises some themes of it, but musically this is as far from those albums as possible. The great atmospheric rock has been abandoned and replaced by neo-prog and AOR clichés, and in comparison to the similar albums around it, this one pales in songwriting as well in execution. Mostly, the material consists of bland pop songs, performed with electric guitars in order to sound heavy, but they can't be fooling anyone really. Even tons of heaviness wouldn't be able to cover the liquid cheese at the core of this album.

Apart from the intro and the outro which rehash some of the music from the older albums, there's only average and unexciting music here. I think I've heard about 80% of all albums featuring Dan Swanö and this is sure the weakest of all. For neo-prog listeners only.