What's that pounding in your head you ask? Well, nothing too much to be concerned with, just the driving rhythms and hammering beats being forcibly driven into your skull! Compliments of Night in Gales, Germany's modern-day answer to those inventive early English torture devices used for employing cruel and insufferable punishment to society's lawbreakers. In fact, there ought to be a law against this kind of audible abuse! "Nailwork" is the third LP from Night in Gales, the Death Metal outfit that really hit their stride with "Thunderbeast" two years prior.

"Nailwork," track by track is violently relentless, humorously revealing, "All Scissors Smile," "How to Eat a Scythe," and sharply direct… take a gander at the front-cover images, those ain't wood screws they're playing with here! In raising the bar for extreme aggression, they've withheld slightly more of the melodic grooves and vocal harmony that prevailed upon "Thunderbeast," making it so majestically impressive. Others of their time have since tried and mostly failed to match the magnitude of this work. Sadly, this includes Night in Gales, themselves, in this case, though "Nailwork" does have it's moments. "Nailwork," "Blades to Laughter," "Filthfinger," but it's a little too one dimensional in spite of the frequently Goth-orientated strains that belie several of the pre-chorus segments.

Alannah Myles must be turning in her grave at about this point after the savage shredding given her "Black Velvet" midway through… Oh, that was her career that died, not actually her. Well, she would if she was. Trust me. It's a horrific cover anyway. The next tune "Filthfinger" is totally better as it strides step for step with the best of their last. Testament-like riffing and frequent major/minor chord changing sends shockwaves into the night where sounds of death can also be heard echoing freely about, enveloped in a convulsive assembly line beat that sounds too technically contrived to further what was an already expansive delivery. "Nailworks" is thankfully not the ascension into progressive/techno many of the like have conspired to produce but neither does it retain those finer elements that made their last record such a highlight!