Madness, My Friend was cult Perth metal band Neverborn's debut album, released 10 years ago in early 2005. The album was several years and several line ups in the making.

Madness, My Friend is a raw and unapologetic introduction to the mind melting, genre bending musical madness that was Neverborn.

Review:
With Madness, My Friend, Western Australia's Neverborn have crafted a debut that if nothing else, offers an insight into what this band has the potential to become. At their core Neverborn are a death metal band, but what sets them apart is their utilisation of creative keyboard lines and a triple vocal attack that ranges from typical death growls to clean vocals to the odd black metal rasp here and there. The strongest fixture of Madness, My Friend is the use of melody above all else. Thankfully Neverborn don't lose sight of their death metal style when crafting their melody and never stray into the Gothenburg style many other melo-death bands tend to these days. It is also pleasing to see that the melody isn't heavily restricted to one instrument over another. Both the guitars and the keyboards get equal attention in this respect and neither comes across as superfluous as can often happen. In fact Neverborn utilise their keyboards extremely well, so much so that they never feel like they are making up for a lack of creativity on the guitars. The production is neither bad nor particularly good and is probably in line with what you would expect from an unsigned band who are recording on a strict budget (of course I have no knowledge of what the budget was for this recording so this is all pure speculation). It sounds a lot like a home studio to me and lacks the spit and polish of a recording made in a studio which has been professionally mastered. That being said, the band have made the best of what is available to them, and if this was recorded in a home studio, then they have done extremely well. If there is one part of this release that I absolutely hated it was the lyrics. Not only do they all appear to be taken from the same template, but they are all terribly written. I have seen bands who write their lyrics in English when it is their second language that are thought out better than these. I realise that we don't all have poetic flair but if the lyrics are included with the CD then they will be scrutinised. Whilst Madness, My Friend isn't the best release I have ever heard, what I took away from it was signs of a band who aren't content to play generic, run of the mill death metal, and who could become a force to be reckoned with in the Australian, and perhaps the international scene. - The Metal Forge 6/10