01. God Is Only For The Dead 02. The Art Of War 03. Against The Wall 04. Mi Revolucion 05. Bleed Like You 06. Serve The Grave 07. If You Were Me 08. Ritual 09. Killing You, Killing Me 10. How Could I Believe 11. Bullet With Butterfly Wings 12. Scarred

Verdict: 8

ILL NINO Dead New World Review

ILL NINO is back with their fifth studio album. This band borders between the obvious and the innovative. The problem is that the quality the band possess not goes hand is hand with the commercialism.

The first album Revolucion Revolucion was really cool when it arrived early in the new millennium. The track Unreal is absolutely brilliant and the lions share of the album is right up there. They really were miles ahead of the fellow metal musicians at the time, using all the right marks of the trade as well as quite a few odd ones. They use Latino percussion, together with scratching, singing in Spanish instead of English, nylon stringed acoustic flamenco guitars were all frequently used to spice things up a bit.

ILL NINO were one of the bands that came along the same time as Slipknot, Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park, Of all these bands only Slipknot could possibly be considered to stay true to what they once did the rest of the bands have evolved into something completely generic to fit the FM radio. ILL NINO have had the exact same problem. The bands album releases has become increasingly uninteresting. 2005's "One Nation Underground" and 2008's "Enigma" are fairly boring albums.

The new album "New Dead World" really sound like an attempt to come alive again, and doing something slightly different. The sound is more organic and the compositions are better than in a long time.

"Against The Wall." with it's rhythmic guitar riff is quite possibly one of the best tracks that ILL NINO ever have produced. The racy chorus is fantastic and the singing performance by Cristian Machado is stellar. "Mi Revolucion" sound just like the old ILL NINO that we have come to like, aggressive tense and the tribal drums are haunting the entire tune. Even the Smashing Pumpkins cover "Bullet With Butterfly Wings" sound great in the hands of ILLL NINO it would have been cooler if they really had made the song their own. The ILL NINO version stay close to the original Smashing Pumpkins arrangement.

Much respect to ILL NINO for struggling on despite the lack of mainstream recognition. The truth is that the masses rarely are interested in interesting music anyway. If you want to check out something slightly different go and pick up the new ILL NINO album "New Dead World". You will be surprised.