When I first saw this album up for possible review for the magazine, I wanted to do it immediately without ever hearing of this band before. The desire was brought forth by a movie from my childhood that I absolutely loved, The Secret of Nyhm. Coincidentally, I saw a review on a different website for the album describing it as a Progressive Gothic Metal album, so I thought that sounded pretty good. Once I actually heard the album I was quite intrigued.
Nicodemus was started by vocalist/bassist Christopher David Morris. Christopher was at first alone in Nicodemus, he recorded the entire first album Tales Of Lovelorn & Necromantic by himself including the female vocals with a voice characteristic changer. He was then later joined by Matthew McGee on guitar, Andrew Greene on drums, and Tamar Yvonne on vocals for the release of The Supernatural Omnibus. Tamar left the band leaving Christopher with all the vocal duties. Dave Peters then added a guitarist to the fold and Kirk Wagner took up the job of keyboardist for the recording of this album, Vanity Is A Virtue.
Nicodemus' style is not really like any other Gothic Metal I have ever heard although I am not into this side of Metal that much. I think one thing that really separates them from other bands is the use of soft male vocals because normally there is male or female operatic vocals, but not just soft vocals. However, there is also a downfall to those vocals being that I think they could sound a little more powerful. Christopher has a beautiful voice, but I think he should alter slightly the key he sings in or just put a little more feeling into the vocals to make them stand out more.
As for the music aspect of Nicodemus it is very atmospheric and very entrancing. The music is some of the best out of this genre that I have really heard except for the heavy weights of the genre like Epica or Within Temptation. The only real downfall of the music is that I think they try to make the songs long to just make them long. The overall song structure is good, but certain parts of the songs just seem a little forced.
With some work I think that this band has some real potential, but there is definitely room for improvement. This band I think could really rank up there with Epica and the others, but they need to work on what I stated, at least in my opinion.
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