About a year or two ago one of the first albums I reviewed for Metalrage.com was the debut album of Nights Like These called The Faithless. Nowadays their second album, Sunlight At Secondhand, has been released and I have the honour of reviewing it. Well let’s see what this five piece Tennessee band has come up with.

 

The start of the album is a brutal one, ‘Heart Of The Wound’ immediately kicks you awake and gives you little time to catch your breath. With ‘Black The Sun’ and ‘Samsara’ it’s the same story but with those three songs I have the idea the music is more open if you compare it to their first album. So this is very promising for the rest of the album.

 

During ‘Bay Of Pigs’ the tempo is a bit slower and ‘Collective Unconscious’ is a nice break between all the musical violence together with ‘Claw Your Way Out’. After this it’s more of the brutality we have heard before. Tight drumming combined with aggressive guitar work and brutal vocals.

 

If I compare this album with their debut The Faithless there are two major differences. The first one is that the songs are mostly above the four minutes and never boring. Which means of course that they’re really improved in their writing skills. Especially when you consider the mid tempo songs and the docile ‘Collective Unconscious’.  The second one is that Nights Like These has made their sound more open. Which gives you the ability to really listen to the music without the feeling that you get overwhelmed and finally can’t follow the song in any way.

 

Truly a great album of a band that has made a great evolution compared with the previous album. I really hope they can pull this further in the future so we can expect some fireworks in the future. I have to admit that I’m already curious about their following album. The only thing I don’t like about this album is that I have received it too late to put it in my yearlist of 2007.