Band: Ill Niño
Album title: Dead New World
Label: AFM Records
Distributor: Rock Inc. - Bertus
Release date: 29/10/2010
Release: CD

Many years ago, Ill Niño was one of the first metal bands I bought a record from and I listened to them all the time. After a while I lost sight of them, until the release of this brand new record, called Dead New World. It’s already their fifth studio album to date, two years after the release of Enigma.

On Dead New World Ill Niño brings you new metal like they’ve already brought it for more than ten years, but now the band has given it a more melodic touch. The opening song “God Is Only For The Dead” immediately starts very heavy and you feel what you can expect from this album. It’s a very good song and it’s very catchy too. The same applies for “Against The Wall“ and “Bleed Like You”, which rather sound like Nickelback songs than Ill Niño songs. Is that a bad thing? I don’t think so. The songs sound great, very catchy again and stick to your mind after having listened to it for the first time. Luckily, the fans of the early days won’t be disappointed with songs as “The Art Of War”, “Mi Revolucion” and “Serve The Grave”, although this last one is the most boring song on the album.
As everyone knows, Ill Niño uses a lot of southern American influences which cannot be missed on their albums. These influences can be found in “Ritual” and “Killing You, Killing Me”, in which the acoustic guitars and drums are present again. For Dead New World, Ill Niño even had the courage to include a cover song from a band you wouldn’t immediately expect them to cover: Smashing Pumpkins.

Ill Niño never really drew the big lot in Europe, but perhaps this album can change that. They rocked several European festivals last summer, let’s hope they can try to repeat that in our clubs, as long as they bring the warmth of their music with them.

84/100

Nick Tronckoe.