This year was truly full of surprises. The latest was this band called Naildown (formerly known as Acid Universe) which recently have released their debut album 'World Domination'. It seems like Spinefarm Records has come to a great decision by signing this band earlier this year. After having released one single as an appetizer last spring so far, Naildown are now back to show what they really have to offer. Usually I'm not expecting too much of debut albums, but 'World Domination' is much better than I thought. The sound is fresh, melodic and it seems like the guys meant business.
It looked like Naildown just popped up out of nothing, but after listening to the album only once they had already convinced me. You can see some influences here and there that make you think of bands like Children of Bodom or Soilwork but I also have to say that Naildown have put a big part of their own style into this album - still it can be labelled as melodic death metal. I'm not sure if it sounds more Finnish or Swedish but it's a nice mixture and if you like one of the abovementioned bands, you will probably like Naildown as well.

The first impression of an album is always important. And in my opinion already the first track "Reflecting My Descent" is one of the highlights of the album. I immediately was hooked by this composition, especially the chorus is awesome. Some other outstanding tracks from 'World Domination' might be "Next Infinity", "Prolong Your Fate" and the title track "World Domination" which is at the same time the only song on the album that exceeds the 6 minutes. One of Naildown's strenghts probably are Daniel Freyberg's (v/g) alternation between typical death metal vocals and clean vocals as they're presented in the chorus here. It sounds like there had never been anything else.
What you can find throughout the album are technical keyboards, excellent guitar-melodies and all in all I didn't find anything that could disturb the album as a whole. Sometimes it's very hard to believe that this is a newcomer band that's been founded only two years ago. There definitely are older bands that needed a much longer time to reach this level Naildown are
starting with.

For sure they aren't the only band playing this kind of metal and there are plenty of bands like them, but why inventing a new style if this works as well? After all it's the result that's counting and I'm pretty sure that the guys do have a big future if they keep taking this seriously and even venture to try out some new things. You cannot expect to like this album at first go, but I can really recommend it to those that are looking for new promising bands of this genre.
All in all I'd say that these guys might need a second or a third album maybe, but then at the latest, they will have their breakthrough!

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