Band: Neaera
Album title: Forging The Eclipse
Label: Metal Blade Records
Distributor: Metal Blade Records – Rough Trade Benelux.
Release date: 22/10/2010
Release: CD

Neaera is a melodic death metal band from Münster, Germany in 2003. Founder of the band Tobias Buck (guitarist of the death/grind band Malzan) started Neaera to change the musical influence of the style he had played before The original line-up, consisting of Buck, Sebastian Heldt, Benny Hilleke, and Benjamin Donath, was quickly assembled and once completed, the band got interested into the Swedish death metal genre, and decided to create a sound of their own, based on similar styles.
During the time that followed (2004), the band was playing gigs under the name of “The Ninth Gate” when Metal Blade Records offered them a record deal. The guys taking this very serious (as it was their dream coming true), the band changed its name to its current one.
This signing was definitely not a mistake; musicianship and creativity of a high level can be found on this album. Although I never heard of them before and they could be total newcomers to the industry, but this record puts the bar so high that its just amazing and jaw dropping.
Its brutal, it has melodies and sounds like a combination of “At the gates” and “Still remains”. Only downside is that there are some production faults on the disc and that some songs don’t flow nicely into each other, like the disc is malfunctioning or has scratches on it.

92/100

Jeroen.