With Disharmonium - Nahab, iconic experimental French black metal outfit Blut Aus Nord return to the psychedelic realms of Lovecraftian confusion that have been their bread and butter in recent years. With each track, curious, unwitting listeners are lured into dimensions of delirium that crawl far beyond the traditional forms of black metal.
Most of the album features mid-tempo, plodding riffs wreathed in distant, chromatic melodies. The genre's trademark blastbeats and tremolo-picking are given infrequent treatment, serving instead to punctuate tracks like "Forgotten Aeon" in a release of tension built up by minutes spent in the mire.
Blut Aus Nord's self described "industrialized avant-garde black metal" exists in the peripheral, experimental edges of the genre. They stand apart from their traditional contemporaries while deserving to sit at the table of cold, desolate music. To market this album without the label of black metal would likely turn no heads, but it's rightfully considered so.
Vocals throughout Disharmonium - Nahab are buried, obscured and occluded beneath the guitars' cloudy textures and their own maddening reverberations. Though hidden in the mix, frontman Vindsval's vocals are deceptively dynamic; chthonic gurgles trade places with otherworldly wails. This is immediately apparent in "Mental Paralysis," the album's first bona-fide composition after an unsettling synthscape opener.
Every song on the record is a discordant piece of a barely comprehensible whole, but nowhere is this more apparent than on "The Black Vortex," in which a jarring, chromatic introduction of reversed guitar notes give way to riffing that work on this motif above alternating drum patterns. "Nameless Rites" offers slight reprieve from this frenzied selection with its palatable, melodic lead lines. However, any glimpse of respite is quickly wrenched away upon the opening moments of the aptly titled "The Ultimate Void of Chaos."
Despite the continuous cacophony that is Disharmonium - Nahab, a few earworm melodies can be found within its confines. A six-note ostinato closes out "Mental Paralysis" for over a minute until it's wriggled its way into the brain like a parasite. "The Endless Multitude" features a line reminiscent of The Twilight Zone's theme music, which is followed by a powerful section that's the closest the album comes to a feeling of triumph, albeit darkly so.
As a direct sequel to its 2022 predecessor Disharmonium - Undreamable Abysses, Nahab is not only worthy of inclusion to the Disharmonium series but a successful development on the theme. The songs are roomier, hazier, cloudier. There's more room to breathe, if you're in the business of breathing the miasmic air of some upside-down dimension, and there's more room to think, if you're unafraid of contemplating the unimaginable.
(Debemur Morti)Most of the album features mid-tempo, plodding riffs wreathed in distant, chromatic melodies. The genre's trademark blastbeats and tremolo-picking are given infrequent treatment, serving instead to punctuate tracks like "Forgotten Aeon" in a release of tension built up by minutes spent in the mire.
Blut Aus Nord's self described "industrialized avant-garde black metal" exists in the peripheral, experimental edges of the genre. They stand apart from their traditional contemporaries while deserving to sit at the table of cold, desolate music. To market this album without the label of black metal would likely turn no heads, but it's rightfully considered so.
Vocals throughout Disharmonium - Nahab are buried, obscured and occluded beneath the guitars' cloudy textures and their own maddening reverberations. Though hidden in the mix, frontman Vindsval's vocals are deceptively dynamic; chthonic gurgles trade places with otherworldly wails. This is immediately apparent in "Mental Paralysis," the album's first bona-fide composition after an unsettling synthscape opener.
Every song on the record is a discordant piece of a barely comprehensible whole, but nowhere is this more apparent than on "The Black Vortex," in which a jarring, chromatic introduction of reversed guitar notes give way to riffing that work on this motif above alternating drum patterns. "Nameless Rites" offers slight reprieve from this frenzied selection with its palatable, melodic lead lines. However, any glimpse of respite is quickly wrenched away upon the opening moments of the aptly titled "The Ultimate Void of Chaos."
Despite the continuous cacophony that is Disharmonium - Nahab, a few earworm melodies can be found within its confines. A six-note ostinato closes out "Mental Paralysis" for over a minute until it's wriggled its way into the brain like a parasite. "The Endless Multitude" features a line reminiscent of The Twilight Zone's theme music, which is followed by a powerful section that's the closest the album comes to a feeling of triumph, albeit darkly so.
As a direct sequel to its 2022 predecessor Disharmonium - Undreamable Abysses, Nahab is not only worthy of inclusion to the Disharmonium series but a successful development on the theme. The songs are roomier, hazier, cloudier. There's more room to breathe, if you're in the business of breathing the miasmic air of some upside-down dimension, and there's more room to think, if you're unafraid of contemplating the unimaginable.