If you read the background to this album you’d be hard pressed not to be terrified when adjectives like hideous, malformed and insidious are used to describe the music of NunFuckRitual. Based on a few of established members from the Norwegian scene, namely Teloch (Nidingr, Mayhem playing live), Andreas Johnson (Tyrant), and Espen T. Hangård (Altaar) their ranks are swelled by the seemingly endless talent of one Dan Lilker (Nuclear Assault, Brutal Truth, etc).
Referencing nuns in your band name is fair game for metallers, especially when the music airs on the side of deviltry and occultist black madness. This six track gargantuan beast of an album epitomises everything that should be horrifyingly nasty about underground metal. The songs are long, creating musical manifestations that threaten your very soul as the band unnerves your fragile existence by producing elongated riffs set against a demonic soundscape. This soundscape equates to you proceeding into the very pits of hell and being mocked continually tormenting riffs that are thrown over you like sludge filth and excrement.
Opening dirge is “Theoktokos” which has lingering guitar feedback and a rancid doom feel using a raw guitar sound that is menacingly efficient. The harsh vocal snarls and yowls create a funereal black metal style as do the choral wails in the background. The riff change is excellent even if it is short-lived before returning the song to its doomy black template. “Komodo Dragon, Mother Queen” is similar to the opener but uses a vocal groan and rumbling bass line that sits in the background like a grotesque fiend sneering at you. The vocal characterisations are similar to that of Root maestro Boss though not quite as varied. The music is purposeful, deliberate and repetitive which is not to say this is boring in any way at all. The effect is hypnotic and mesmerising and in some respects quite soothing, like a cathartic release of some sorts from all the woe and anguish that are infecting your life.
There are some old Sabbath touches to the riffing on “Christokokos” as eerie creaking effects are used to unsettle the listener as though you’re in the aural equivalent to a slasher or Giallo film or maybe even an Alfred Hitchcock flick. The keyboard sections that are used on the album are haunting and create that unnerving texture I hinted at earlier. As the album progresses into “Cursed Virgin, Pregnant Whore” you get the impression that someone is stalking you with the slow but ruthlessly intense riff structure. The riffs are black, dark and viscous and reach out like the tree rape scene in The Evil Dead, weird I know but it’s what I thought of at the time. The change in pace is great as the song transforms momentarily to an epic entity that is bolstered by what seem like female solo vocals sobbing gently in the background. With two tracks to go you’ll either be a shivering wreck by now or verging on being totally paranoid as your eyes look skittishly around the room seeing shadows and hearing sounds that aren’t there. “Parthenogen” is somewhat heavier with its drum work which for the most part aids in creating that hypnotic drive each song holds. The song offers more variety in structure but keeps the pace funereal, lugubrious and sinisterly doleful. The song borders a doom death style especially with the deeper vocal delivery. Closing the album is the title track which again has malignant poise as you quite often feel corrupted by this album such is the pernicious atmosphere one is subjected to. A truly disturbing and disconcerting album from end to end and one which you should investigate immediately on its release if you dare. Spine-chilling and ghoulish music.
http://www.myspace.com/nunfuckritual
Martin Harris
MTUK HOME
