Band:	Nothnegal
Album:	Antidote Of Realism
Style:	Black metal, Death metal
Release date:	March 2009

01. Antidote Of Realism
02. Web Of Deceit
03. Temptress Of Shadows
04. Now I've Waken

Before this EP I honestly didn't have any knowledge about the Maldivian metal scene, let alone the existence of metal bands on the Maldives (a small group of islands in the Indian Ocean). But after sitting through this "Antidote Of Realism" EP, I can tell you they sure know how to rock around there.

Nothnegal is a young band, founded somewhere in 2006, starting out at first as an Arch Enemy and Children Of Bodom cover band (the influences of the latter are still fairly remarkable in the contemporary sound). After a while the band added a keyboardist to their ranks and started composing their own material, heavily inspired of the Finnish masters of the Extreme Power metal genre, such as Kalmah and Eternal Tears Of Sorrow. And that prototypical Finnish sound is also vividly represented on this nice four song EP as Eternal Tears Of Sorrow's Risto Ruuth is doing a guitar solo on "Web of Deceit", while keyboard player Marco Sneck from Kalmah-fame is making a guest appearance on the EP's title track (in the meantime, Sneck joined the band as full-time member, along with current Dååth drummer Kevin Talley behind the kit). Pretty impressive line up additions for such a young and unknown band, if you ask me.

For the fans of the genre, this four song EP is certainly a nice appetizer. Though, despite their hard work and many efforts, the band didn't manage to convince me all the way because of some lack in freshness and originality. Don't get me wrong Nothnegal sound reasonably mature in their performance and they have a lot of power in their music, and their impression of the "richly melodic, Scandinavian-inspired" sound has everything it should have, yet the spark's just not there. Also the EP's a little too short to completely win over the listener (except for the already mentioned die-hard fans). Nonetheless, the band seems to have a lot of potential and I'm sure they will get more recognition and credit with their new line up. One thing is sure: this band is ready to make it big.