I

The third album from Nightingale called I is a mixed bag for me. On one hand I really think this is a good album, but there is far between the really excellent songs. Dan Swanö is assisted by his brother Tom Nouga on guitar and keyboards while he plays everything else on the album and sings of course. This is still not a group effort but mostly a solo album from Dan Swanö like the first two Nightingale albums.

The music has developed quite a bit since The Closing Chronicles. The beautiful symphonic progressive rock which was on The Closing Chronicles have changed character. I starts with the two best songs on the album Scarred For Life and Still In The Dark which are fast rocking symphonic rock songs. These two songs are IMO some of the best songs ever made by Nightingale and if every song on the album sounded like those songs this would have been a masterpiece. Unfortunately Nightingale slows thing down for the rest of the album. The rest of the songs are good songs, but they have a tendency to melt together and not really be memorable which is a bit disappointing. There are only hints of metal in Nightingales ´s music, so don´t let the progressive metal label scare you away. The overall style is still symphonic prog rock/ metal with Dan Swanö´s beautiful vocal melodies in the center.

While the compositions have flaws it´s the production that is the biggest sinner. With a better production some of these songs might have worked better. The vocals are especially badly produced. It´s really a pity.

Both Dan Swanö and Tom Nouga are great musicians, so there is nothing wrong with the musicianship except maybe for the drums. Dan will never be a really good drummer and sometimes the drums are so primitive that it´s almost embarresing to call this progressive rock.

Even though I has lots of flaws I will still rate it 3 stars as it still is a very good album. I still prefer the two first Nightingale albums though.