Nevermore – The Obsidian Conspiracy

Reviewed by Scott

Nevermore has a new album out, titled The Obsidian Conspiracy. When I saw this album, two questions immediately came to mind. First, what exactly is an obsidian conspiracy? And second, how will this album stand up to their last, 2005’s This Godless Endeavor? That album is arguably their greatest, the fullest realization of the Nevermore sound (thrash metal blended with elements of prog, power metal, and classic metal, with a little bit of new wave and goth rock thrown in for good measure). And the title is easy enough to understand right away, at least on a basic level (oh right: atheism). But will The Obsidian Conspiracy – whatever the fuck that is – be able to match the high points of This Godless Endeavor, like the long closing title track, which is maybe the best Nevermore song ever written?

Well after listening to this album for some time, I’m still unable to tell you what an obsidian conspiracy is. And that’s symptomatic of the album’s main weakness, which leads us to my second question. No, it isn’t as good as the last one – but that’s not to say this isn’t an excellent album. I would have been highly surprised if I had put on The Obsidian Conspiracy and immediately thought that it surpassed This Godless Endeavor. After all, I’ve been listening to the latter for half a decade, and listening to it a lot, so maybe it’ll be a few years before I can really compare these two albums from anything like an objective perspective. But then again, ranking albums according to quality like this is probably bullshit, and I should really just say that they’re both fantastic.

Which they are. Nevermore has never released a bad album, and The Obsidian Conspiracy is as good as anything in their catalog. The riffs are awesome, the songwriting is tight, and vocalist Warrel Dane is at his best here. But the main problem with this album is lyrical. Dane has always been a political lyricist (and certainly, if broadly, on the left) and this seems like it was conceived as a deeply political album (the “conspiracy” of the title, for instance). Whatever his intentions, though, the lyrics are mostly vague, ambiguous, and nihilistic, unlike previous Nevermore songs which tend to get right to the point.

Sure, the lyrics on The Obsidian Conspiracy sound badass, but who knows what the fuck he’s singing about? For instance, from the opening track, “The Termination Proclamation”: “The lines of right and wrong / Are blurred in the name of freedom / As those who cannot speak / Assume their positions and die / Feel the hook pulled by the system slave.” Now a red like me will listen to this and think, Oh he’s singing about bourgeois “free market” ideology, which “in the name of freedom” brings nothing but misery and death to the powerless and the voiceless, the “system slaves” of capitalism. And yeah, it’s fun sometimes to interpret lyrics like this, when they don’t give you too much to go on. But these are some of the most directly political lyrics on the entire album. You’ll have to check it out for yourself, but the major flaw of this album is that too much is left unnamed and too much is examined indirectly, to the point where any political power the songs could have had is basically lost.

You won’t find lyrics like these, about someone incarcerated on drug charges from the song “Inside Four Walls” off of Dead Heart in a Dead World: “Inside four walls, inside four walls my friend / They took away your freedom / And the pigs still preach their lies.” The lying pigs! And certainly nothing like this, from Dane’s solo release Praises to the War Machine: “While the poor men die, the rich men sing / Monetary praises to the war machine.” Fuckin’ a right they do!

I’m not asking that Dane spend every song regurgitating revolutionary slogans – in fact, some of Nevermore’s best stuff isn’t explicitly political, but deals with highly subjective explorations of alienation, atheism, technological development, suicide, relationships of power, etc (which isn’t to say that it’s not political). And plenty of their best stuff is lyrically vague but makes me want to throw up the horns anyway because it just sounds so cool. But this is an entire album that dances around its seemingly political themes by relying on empty phrases and the occasional metal cliché. The most coherent songs on the album are about a ghost (a woman born in 1617 in fact) who basically just moves shit around and whispers to the narrator, and about someone telling a newborn infant that life is fucked up but also can be pretty ok. And we still don’t know what an obsidian conspiracy is – who’s conspiring? Against whom or what? Why? Why does it even matter?

Maybe this all sounds harsh, but the lyrical content of The Obsidian Conspiracy feels like a retreat. Dane himself captures the mood of this album in the song “Emptiness Unobstructed”: “And I will say once more / The world is still a spinning ball of confusion / That no one understands.” Everyone can relate to that, myself included, but if Nevermore albums have always been about existential confusion – along with the alienation we experience in modern life, the helplessness we feel in the face of systemic destruction, and the rage that overcomes us at the sight of injustice – then Warrel Dane at least used to know where to point the finger. After listening to The Obsidian Conspiracy, though, you’re left feeling more existentially confused than ever.

But this album’s lyrical flaws are minor compared to what it achieves as a whole. It kicks ass. Dane’s vocals are theatrical in the best sense of the word – perfectly enunciated and charged with controlled emotional intensity. And guitarist Jeff Loomis is a fucking monster. I can’t even go into it. Just get this album and make sure your bowels are clear before listening to him shred, or else you’re going to have a serious mess on your hands (and floor).