If you’re like me, you likely wrote Nachtmystium off when “Nightfall” landed on the love-it-or-hate-it video game Rock Band. Not because all black metal fans hate Rock Band or anything but because the song sounds like Fall Out Boy fronted by Varg Vikernes.
Usually when bands put out songs that hint at a full-on transformation and then confirm an entire community’s fears with just one song, it’s lights out. Lock it up, seal it away—the band is dead to the community that once praised them.
It can be a tough event to rebound from.
However, one listen to the opening track of Nachtmystium’s new record, Silencing Machine, and you’ll find that Nachtmystium is the exception to the rule.
The album title signifies the content perfectly:
Silencing Machine is designed to gobble up critics, quell their doubts and send them out the other side in one fell swoop.
The opening track of Silencing Machine, “Dawn Over the Ruins of Jerusalem,” is as evil- sounding and grimy as anything the band’s ever done. In fact, the sound is so bottom-heavy and abrasive you will be forced to adjust the EQ on your sound system.
Word of caution: If you don’t have an EQ for iTunes, you will need one. The bass is up entirely too high on the record, and your listening will be inhibited unless you take steps to remedy it.
The first thing you’ll notice from Silencing Machine is the completely pared-down black metal sound. Although there was a time when the band was championed by critics as a “psychedelic black metal band,” the opening track and the title track that follows tell a new story for Nachtmystium.
Gone is the psych influence, save a couple of texturally swirly synth tracks embedded within the darkness. Nachtmystium has once again found its roots.
In fact, the production and arrangement definitely calls to mind old-school black metal staples of years past; bands like Immortal and Burzum aren’t free from Nachtmystium’s subtle mimicry. Fans of either band will find a lot to like in Silencing Machine.
For the most part.
Nachtmystium seems to finds it difficult to shake its brief taste of success, and some of the content suffers as a result. Some tracks sound like a completely different band, except for the vocalist. The result is laughable: think black metal Weird Al Yankovic.
Songs like “Decimation, Annihilation,”—possibly the laziest black metal song title in, well, forever—sound like Looney Tunes-era Raymond Scott composing a black metal track.
Eventually, the song picks up into more familiar territory, but the damage is done. The first half is so bouncy and ridiculous that it sounds like Wile E. Coyote getting hit with a mallet while Nachtmystium plays on a cliff face in the background.
Other tracks, like “Give Me the Grave,” sound like Candlebox cutting a black metal record. Overall, if any track were to get picked up for another Rock Band game, this would be it.
Because there’s a lot of overlap between bikers and crappy ’90s grunge music, the song sounds like one you’d hear at Sturgis, not unlike embarrassing Pantera offshoot Hellyeah.
It’s a song that weekend warrior dads on Honda Goldwings and their snot-nosed Rock Band-playing spawn can really bond over. The closing seconds are a sustained note that goes harder than the rest of the track combined.
Other than these two glaring canker sores, the record is relatively solid. “And I Control You” is easily the star of the effort. It cleanly exhibits Nachtmystium’s versatility without losing focus on the community that birthed them. It’s a perfect mix of disgusting black metal and metal that isn’t as cloying as some.
Melodic guitars steal the attention away from the more evil elements of “Borrowed Hopes and Broken Dreams,” though the title sounds like a particularly mascara-soaked emo cut. The cleaner guitar lines add a very “classic metal” feel to a record whose chops are the only thing unquestionable.
Predictably, the heaviest track on the record is the aptly titled “I Wait In Hell.” A more Pantera-inspired Nachtmystium begins the cut until the whole thing spirals out of control into completely cacaphonic black metal ooze. As vocalist Blake Judd snarls “I want you to die…I wait in hell,” it’s easy to be a little intimidated.
Coupled with the fact that it’s on this track that Judd’s vocals sound the most impassioned, it’s easy to see that Nachtmystium isn’t done yet. Strangely, there’s a weird part in the middle that sounds like Matchbox Twenty. Stranger still is the fact that it actually works.
“Reduced to Ashes” has an equally out-of-place, theremin-sounding part that works well over the acrid instrumentals.
Unfortunately, the final track, “These Rooms In Which We Weep,” is a letdown, as Nachtmystium seems to feel like going out with a fizzle is better than a bang—the track is a seven-minute buildup that never explodes.
Upon the record’s closing, one thing comes to mind: Nachtmystium needs to cut it out with the four-on-the-floor beats. It almost feels like an attempt to get cornball bros and “yeah, but can you dance to it” moms into black metal. Guys, you really need to ditch that. It’s not a good look.
Nachtmystium
Silencing Machine
Century Media
Out Now
Four Stars