METAL DIGEST - THE NORMLESS MUSIC MAGAZINE
Album Title: Ashes of Our Past
Reviewed on November 10, 2023
There are those bands which hit the ground running and nothing stays the same again. Yes, I did just manage to squeeze in a Van Halen lyric. This flying start applies to Never Reborn and after the Arizona band delivered their superb EP in 2020, Never Reborn are back with their full-length debut album ‘Ashes of Our Past’.
If you didn’t get the chance to hear that EP, then ‘Ashes of Our Past’ offers the chance to rectify this situation with an album of pummelling metal which takes in huge elements of thrash, black and death metal to get its sound across. Yet, Never Reborn aren’t continuing to rehash their EP sound, ‘Ashes of Our Past’ shows that the band have expanded on their sound without venturing into the realms of avant-garde or post metal bollocks. This is delivered with thunderous double bass drum blasts and pneumatic riffs where tracks such as ‘Children of Fire’, ‘Death March Armageddon’ and ‘Fallen One’ show all the grimness of Celtic Frost, Hellhammer and Bathory and early Kreator, Sepultura and Pestilence.
There is no other way to really describe ‘Ashes of Our Past’ other than excellent. It is an absolutely fantastic album and any fan of 80’s style black/thrash/death should get on this because it really is one of the best underground albums of 2023.
Adam McCann
SUBTLE DEATH MAGAZINE
Never Reborn - Ashes of Our Past
Reviewed By Subtle Death Magazine
Wednesday July 19 2023
https://issuu.com/subtledeath/docs/subtledeath-94-2023
Metalczine: Chris Forbes’s Metal Reviews #13
Album Title: Ashes of Our Past
Reviewed on May 9th, 2023
A decent mix of thrash meets Kreator, by Kreator, I mean in the vocals as the signet could pass for Mille. The music is thrash metal with bits and pieces of death metal. The music is fairly catchy and not just generic thrash and having a singer that sounds like Mille is a plus as well.
Chris Forbes
Abaddon Magazine
Album Title: Ashes of Our Past
Reviewed on March 8th, 2023
Although I am not a fan of American thrash / death metal scene, because for a long time I didn’t hear something original from that continent, I must say that this time, hearing Never Reborn, I take back what I said. Reason why I avoid to review American bands is that there are a few riffs they made and in the glory of Slayer, Sepultura or Metallica, all melodies look alike and the story ends there. That is not a new information or my kind of musical philosophy, but I assume a lot of people agree with me. Even if no one does, I am right, I am sure.
Never Reborn is not a young band. They exist from 2014 but they didn’t have any releases until 2020 and their first EP under the name of “What Darkness Brings”. I have no clue why they didn’t make an album of it but for sure they should have done that. Three brilliant musicians, first full length, ten songs, tons of small gigs before and I am sorry for that. Many bands have concerts on world stages and even make money from music while bands like this stay in the shadows. Some only exist because of some old glory but music and the concerts are lame more than ever. Not fair but that can be changed. Now, with this album, the metal world is richer for one awesome band and album.
“Ashes of Our Past”, a death / thrash metal by its genre went out to the light of day in March this year. Many facts make this album great but let’s start with the simplest. From the first to the last song this band really showed us what they can do and how much experience they have in writing the history of metal. “Storms End” is an opening instrumental that’s slowly taking us into the story, but after that “Never Reborn” that is dedicated to the name of the band, with its progressive atmosphere, just prepared us for what comes next. Interesting is the lesson we can learn from the lyrics of this song. Original statement about Christianity and rebirth are central parts of the song. Maybe someday we will learn why we were never reborn. Christianity gave us an idea, but this song gave us a lesson of reality.
The song “Ashes of Our Past” is partly the reason why I liked this album. With deadly good guitar riffs and even better solos, this song really sounds like an anthem. Every great band has it so I think this will be theirs. Even if the songs really don’t look alike, this fact connects them.
Doomy slow moments with background guitar solo riffs are the mark of this album. In songs like “Deathmarch Armageddon” or ’’Ashes of Our Past” the riffs or solos (call them however you want) are just in the right place. They don’t bother the rest of the melody or volume down the rest of the instruments. This really brought on the creativity of the melodies.
Next half of the album is more progressive and, for my taste, better than the first part. Drums and bass gave here the biggest effort next to the solos that give out the vibe of classic heavy metal. Especially in songs like “Fallen One” and “Requiem (World of Hurt)” that heavy metal atmosphere is present.
Central part of the album are the lyrics. Idea is not so unique, but in the spirit of metal. Satan, doom of Christianity, band’s view of afterlife, nightmares. That brings up the darkness of the entire album and lyrics are well written with much imagination and in poem spirit. All of them are long with specific subject and they bring maybe 40 percent of the quality of the album. There are many bands whose subject is exactly this but in my opinion Never Reborn made a huge effort in every way to express themselves.
I hope we will soon see more albums, EPs and, more importantly, concerts from Never Reborn. In this world lacking of creativity, many bands and albums were born but not so excellent as this one. So, let’s give them a chance like a wind in the back to show you they can also be famous and “el grande” band. I know I will.
Soil Chronicles
Album Title: Ashes of Our Past
Reviewed on May 29, 2023
The trio comes to us from Arizona and, after a first EP What Darkness Brings which dates back to 2020, the group offers us here its real first album Ashes of Our Past.
After a rather nice intro, place to the title “Never Reborn” which starts on a very dooming riff. Then the group continues in a style that was found at the time on Celtic Frost albums.The following title, "Existence Denied", is quite Metallica period And Justice For All in the proposed style, and only the voice remains extreme, here, with a strong Black Metal side.
"Ashes of our Past" and "Haunted Eternally" are a bit more extreme, but beware, it's still quite heavy musically speaking: at times, we have the impression of listening to a Heavy Metal album burnt by the voice but , question tempo, it's never very fast. The other titles remain in the same vein: don't expect to find here big accelerations and parts blasted to death, because it is clearly not in the major influences of Steve White , the main composer of the group.
Here is an album which remains very correct on the ten titles offered here, with a very clean production. Finally, the cover offers a rather nice pattern to look at. On the other hand, no title really stands out, and it could have been nice to have one or two songs that we manage to memorize.
It would be good if the band made their music more aggressive and violent in the future, because it feels more like listening to a Heavy Metal album with an extreme typed voice, more than a real Metal Extreme album , in literal sense of the term. The trio has capabilities and will be able, I'm sure, to offer us some heavy stuff for the future.