This is US band Nightbringer’s third album since their formation in 1999. Through and through Black Metal, they seem to have found their niche in a gloomy and creepy world, inhabited by ringing guitars and shadowy distortions.
The dark and methodical journey begins with “Rite of the Slaying Tongue”. It’s as if we’re being locked inside a remote castle. The wind whistles through the air. A door creaks, and we’re exposed to the sound of disharmonious guitars creating the image of disturbed minds. It’s slow, and growled painfully. The vocalist continues to hiss his way through “Eater of the Black Lead”, another slow and sweepingly dark track. The guitars ring out but the dominant atmosphere is that of death. “Psychagogoi”, the next track, involves more wading through treacle. The guitar work is as ever dark and melancholic. There seems to be nowhere to go other than depression and so it continues. The deliberate cacophony continues with “Lucifer Trismegistus” whose dark mutterings are only enlivened by the periodic shriek of the guitar. For a moment I found myself likening this dark and depressive work to Blut aus Nord but without the imagination. That monotonous ringing is well …. grey and monotonous. There’s more of a plea in the vocalist’s hissings on “The Gnosis of Inhumation”. It’s horror movie stuff – a doomier version of Nocturnal Breed.
The intensity picked up on the more multi-dimensional “The Angel of Smokeless Fire”. To begin, the church organ precedes another doomy, guitar-supported, dirge. The dark choir, which serves to reinforce the anti-religious air of this work, merges with the deep, thumping drums and guitar, and those enveloping satanic voices. The swirling sounds are there as ever but there’s greater intensity. Again it’s precise and slow, but this time it’s seductive. The addition is the impressive level of melancholy which goes with the deathliness.
After “The Angel of Smokeless Fire”, it’s more of the same – slow, heavy darkness, dark whisperings and doomy, Satanic overtones. It’s all designed to whip up a sense of overwhelming darkness. I guess it does, but is the creation of dark soundwaves and atmosphere enough? It should be, but this album just doesn’t ask enough questions of the listener. If, on the other hand, you’re looking for an hour’s worth of near impenetrable gloom, you’ll love “Hierophany of the Open Grave”.
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Andrew Doherty
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