NABERUS is metal band from Melbourne, Australia who play a searing combination of Melodic Death and Thrash.  The two genres are weaved together simultaneously, creating a sound that has a great sense of melody but also contains urgent, arresting groove that hammers into you.  The songwriting approach tends to stick to the tried and true formula of verse/chorus/verse as far a lyrics go, but it never gets too repetitive and the band throws in more than enough musical passages.  On top of all that, the chorus' are surprisingly catchy.   That may or may not be a bad thing to some metal fans but the band is sincere and honest in their sound.  "Dirge of Sanity" is an instrumental that gets everything right: it isn't too short or long and it fits in a lot of different passages that keep the interest going.  At the song's start we get some beautiful acoustics, show casing Dan Ralph and James Ash's twin guitar attack; they work very well together throughout the album but the instrumental really shows how good they are.  The melodic solo continues with some good, heavy riffs behind it.

The opening track, "Drones," has a down tuned riff that displays groove, offset by the other guitar playing some great melody.  Vocalist Ash spits out his screams and growls a mile a minute, he sounds like heavier throated version of TOMPA from AT THE GATES.  He does use clean vocals quite a bit, which is a bit off putting to be honest, but they sound decent.  Brian Fair from SHADOWS FALL is what springs to mind with his cleans; they definitely could be worse. Around the three minute mark, there is a great section of melodic death metal backed by the extremely loud and pounding drumming of Chris Sheppard.  This guy is a beast, he pounds the skins like his life depends on it.  His technique is very energetic and he can compliment the songs while driving home a great, thrashy beat when needed.

"Darkest Day" begins with some acoustic, invoking super early IN FLAMES.  Featured in the beginning is a short but sweet somber guitar solo that gives way to another thrash attack; the band brings it a mile a second. The next track, "Gallows" is very groove oriented, the metal flowing like a river.  The  chorus is pretty good, starting out with cleans then going into a very high pitched death shout, once again showing the bands ability to balance melody with heavy without compromising either.  As I have mentioned in other reviews this year, melodic death has made a strong comeback, held up by several different bands that emerged onto the scene.  With "Lost Reveries," NABERUS adds to this strong framework.