Review: Nubian Rose – Amen

Pride & Joy Music (January 19^th 2023)

Reviewer: Jason Hopper

After a ten-year hiatus, Nubian Rose have returned with their third album ‘Amen‘. I first heard the band through a Classic Rock AOR Magazine CD compilation back in 2012. I bought their debut album ‘Mountain‘ straight away and was highly impressed with the release. It’s full of catchy, melodic euro hard rock melodies and the enchanting voice of Sofia Lilja. Their second album ‘Mental Revolution‘, while not as strong as their debut, was a pleasant follow-up. When news came that a follow-up was finally on the horizon, I had to check it out.

What I ended up getting was something I was not expecting. This is nowhere near as hard-hitting as those first two albums and is an entirely different beast. It is much more experimental, less melodic, and at times quieter than what came before.

The album opens with ‘Memorial’ which serves as a short piano-based intro and reminds me of something you would hear in the opening credits of a James Bond movie. According to the press release, the song is a “short, emotional piece, where Sofia is experiencing her own death and funeral in the lyrics”. While it is quaint, this is an unfortunate way to open any album and should have been saved for the end. No album should open on such a downer track.

Things get somewhat back on track with ‘Dramatic Day’, the first of several songs that does not have a true chorus, which was by design according to the band. It is both bombastic and moody with a hypnotic elegance that sounds like something a band like Within Temptation would compose.

It is at this point that I started to worry that this album would be a complete misfire. However, some songs displayed the old Nubian Rose finesse I was longing for. ‘Break Down the Walls’, ‘Desert Night’, ‘Holy Roar’ and ‘Bright Lights’ are all songs that sound like a natural progression from their second album. While some of them have issues (more on that later), they still felt like the sound I have come to expect from the band.

‘Running’, on the other hand, is a straight up disco track and sounds like an amalgamation of KISS’s ‘I Was Made for Loving You’ and Blondie’s ‘Heart of Glass’. It’s catchy and infectious in all the ways disco was as a musical movement.  Admittedly, it took me a bit to appreciate the song as it caught me off guard, but I have since warmed to it. It’s the most out of left field turn on the album.

Unfortunately, this album does make some choices that I could not warm to. Along with a wrong opener, the previously mentioned track ‘Desert Night’, while a solid track, makes the unfortunate mistake of burying Sofia’s voice under heavy percussion instrumentation, which is mixed too loud. It also jarringly ends with a way too quick fade.

‘Lost in the Mist’ is far and away my least favorite on the album. A nearly ten-minute-long composition, it’s a song that is too long and, while parts of it are intriguing, it ultimately builds towards nothing. Just when you think you’re getting to the crescendo, it regresses and falls back to quieter parts that drag and offer nothing of interest. It comes alive towards the end but by then the momentum has been lost.

Another misstep is how some of the songs promote guitarist Christer Akerlund into the lead singer spotlight.  He is nowhere near as good as Sofia.  He co-sings the previously mentioned ‘Bright Lights’ and adds nothing vocally dynamic. For ballad ‘Red Sky’ he detracts from the beauty of the song. If Sofia had done the song solo, it would have been one of my favorites on the album.

The band concludes the album with a cover of Dalbello’s ‘Gonna Get Close to You’. To make this performance stand out from the original and the Queensryche version, the band utilizes industrial instrumentation, making it sound like a song covered by Nine Inch Nails. While it’s never been a favorite song of mine, I will say the industrial programming perfectly gels with the creepiness of the lyrics. Similar to ‘Running’, this is a song that I did not care for at first, but the more I listened, the more I dug it and returned to it for repeat listens.

Those expecting something similar to their first two albums are in for a surprise. I found myself re-writing this review several times. There’s a lot to take in here and I went back and forth with reviews of various songs. At first, my review was negative as it’s such a departure for the band and from what I loved about them. With repeat listens, I found a portion of songs I initially did not care for growing on me. This is not something that usually happens when I check out an album. Frankly, if I was not reviewing this album, I would have given it a once over and been done with it. That would have been unfortunate as I discovered some great tracks here. It’s not as immediate as what they produced before but give it a few spins and you may feel the same as well.

Tracklist:

1. Memorial
2. Dramatic Day
3. Break Down the Walls
4. Running
5. Lost in the Mist
6. Red Sky
7. Desert Night
8. Holy Roar
9. Bright Lights
10. Gonna Get Close to You