MELODIC DEATH METAL

Nightrage’s live performance at The Temple club in Athens. Nightrage was founded by Marios Iliopoulos and his close friend Gus G in June 2000. After put together demos in 2001 and 2002, they finally released their first full album, ‘Sweet Vengeance’, in 2003. It featured drummer Per Möller Jensen (The Haunted), and bassist Brice Leclercq. They also managed to acquire the services of legendary vocalist Tomas Lindberg (At the Gates) and Tom S. Englund of Evergrey fame. Their second release, ‘Descent into Chaos’, followed in 2005 and featured a more permanent rhythm section in the shape of Fotis Benardo (Septic Flesh, ex-Innerwish) and Henric Carlsson. With Gus G’s role performing with Arch Enemy taking more and more of the talented guitarists time, Nightrage looked to a number of tour replacements to cover for him until Gus made the decision to permanently left Nightrage and focus completely on Firewind (before landing the coveted guitar spot in Ozzy Osbourne’s band). Nightrage’s third album, ‘A New Disease Is Born’, was released in 2007. Gus G. was replaced by Dragonland/Amaranthe guitarist Olof Mörck. In keeping with the band’s revolving door of members, 2007 also saw Antony Hämäläinen, bassist Anders Hammer, and drummer Johan Nunez (Firewind, Kamelot) join the band in the summer of 2007. Their fourth album, ‘Wearing a Martyr’s Crown’, was recorded, produced, and mixed by Fredrik Nordström at Studio Fredman. Several tracks from the album, namely, ‘A Grim Struggle’, ‘Collision of Fate’, ‘Shed the Blood’, and ‘Wearing a Martyr’s Crown’ were made available as downloadable content for the Rock Band video game series on Xbox. On 30 June 2011 ‘A Grim Struggle’ was made available for download on the PlayStation 3 console. 2011’s ‘Insidious’ once again featured Tomas Lindberg and Tom Englund on vocals, along with guest appearances from Gus G, Apollo Papathanasio (Firewind, Spiritual Beggars) and John K. Starting on 9 October 2011, the band supported the new album on a tour of North America, joining Firewind and Arsis, titled ‘Frets Of Fury’. In 2013, Antony Hämäläinen and Johan Nunez officially left the band to pursue other musical ventures. Ronnie Nyman was recruited to replace Hämäläinen on vocals. With Nyman, the band released their sixth studio album, ‘The Puritan’, in 2015. 2017 saw the release of album number seven, ‘The Venomous’. With yet more changes in the band (Magnus Söderman (guitars) and Lawrence Dinamarca (drums) completing the line-up) the album won wide spread critical acclaim. 2019’s ‘Wolf to Man’ featured another shift in personnel with a new rhythm section arriving (Francisco Escalona, Bass and drummer Dino George Stamoglou) but the core of the band stayed the same. The resulting album was widely acclaimed as one of the band’s best.

Credits: Production: Metalourgio – Metal Web Radio/Webzine @ 2023
Stuff Video: Dimitris koudonas
Sound engineer Lucien Klimis