Lets start this review with a quote shamelessly stolen from Wikipedia: “Andorra, officially the Principality of Andorra, also called the Principality of the Valleys of Andorra, is a landlocked microstate in Southwestern Europe, located in the eastern Pyrenees mountains and bordered by Spain and France”. According to the same Wikipedia page, Andorra had a population of 78,360 back in 2012; five of these individuals play in the progressive metal band Nami. According to another Internet page, Encyclopaedia Metallum, Nami is one of the four bigger metal bands in this small nation; actually make this one of three, as Among the Mist is apparently no more.
These facts intrigue me and they should at least draw the interest of the average metal fan. It is a tough world out there for any band and coming from a country this small can only mean that you had to work hard to get somewhere and your music must certainly be of a good standard. Luckily in the case of Nami this is more than certainly the case. They are about to release their second release The Eternal Light of the Unconscious Mind, the follow up album to their in 2011 released debut release Fragile Alignments.
Musically Nami plays a very interesting style of progressive metal, hitting similarities with The Ocean, Gojira and Textures at times, especially when the riffing is heavy, and the grunts and complex drum rhythms come into play. At other times Nami plays a more progressive rock, with more cleaner sounding parts and clean vocals, though never losing the complexity of the rhythms and instrument playing. There are beautiful melodic elements throughout the album as well, vocally as well as by the guitars and deeper layers of keys.
Nami also managed to get some interesting contributions on The Eternal Light of the Unconscious Mind, with The Ocean’s Loïc Rossetti providing vocals on ‘Silent Mouth’, and Carlos Lozano and Marc Martins from one of the other Andorran metal bands, namely progressive death metalers Persefone, with the former singing along on opening track ‘The Beholders’ and the latter playing the lead guitar on the closing track ‘The Dream Eater’.
All 9 tracks on The Eternal Light of the Unconscious Mind are of outstanding quality with lots on offer for both fans of progressive rock and progressive metal. Final track ‘The Dream Eater’, with its 9 minutes in length, displays perhaps the biggest tour de force of them all, throwing rhythms and riffs allover the place, adding a nice bit of saxophone and keyboards, various vocal styles, and brilliant lead guitar parts (by the already mentioned Martins of Persefone).
Yes, this is a great release by the, to me at least, previously unknown band Nami. In fact, I didn’t even know Andorra had any metal bands until now! These guys deserve to get some great recognition and they should definitely put Andorra on the musical metal map. I’d totally recommend you’re getting your hands on a copy of The Eternal Light of the Unconscious Mind when it hits the shops on November 4th through Graviton Music Services.
