AN NCS PREMIERE: EVIL NERFAL — “FUCK OFF JESUS CHRIST”

 

We’re now slightly more than three weeks away from Christmas, and really, what says Christmas better than a reverent ode named “Fuck Off Jesus Christ“?

No doubt this song will ring from the PA systems of churches near and far and quickly become part of the caroling playlist of shopping malls and elevators. People “in the know” say that the Bible-thumpers who control our own U.S. Congress are planning to make it part of the introduction to their prayer breakfasts. Humble pilgrims trekking to see the face of Jesus miraculously formed by a donkey’s puckered asshole will have it in their heads as they put one foot in front of the other toward the barnyard shrine.

Well, not really. But we can dream, can’t we?

“Fuck Off Jesus Christ” may not fill the air waves in churches, malls, or make-shift shrines to imagined miracles, but it’s a damned good song that will pleasure your earholes. It comes from an album named Bellum Est Pater Omnium by the Colombian black metal band Evil Nerfal, an album that will be jointly released on January 9 by GrimmDistribution (Belarus) and Morbid Skull Records (El Salvador).

 

 

We are told that Evil Nerfal was born in Pasto, a city in southwestern Colombia, drawing inspiration from the likes of old Mayhem, Marduk, Sarcófago, Enthroned, and Denial of God. Their debut album, Hail Black Metal​.​.​. Vobiscum Buer​.​.​., finally appeared in 2016, but the new record reveals the work of a band who have become more creative and more distinctive since those songs were recorded, and who also now incorporate elements of death metal and western classical music (among other things), but who are no less devoted to the tenets of Satanic and anti-Christian opposition.

 

The band’s dedication to their philosophical principles is of course unmistakably reflected in the title of this song we’re premiering, yet at the same time, the title could be misleading. Unfamiliar with the music, I assumed the song would be some kind of stripped-down, punk-fueled rough-housing or a full-throttle, straight-ahead black-thrashing rampage, but in either case something much more simplistic than what the song actually turned out to be.

And here, I think it’s relevant to quote one of the band’s explanations of what they sought to achieve in the album’s music: “It is intended that the reception of the disc involves a self-absorption in dementia, an aesthetic that immerses in the shadows of the subject, that within the repertoire of the undeground an ontological removal is provoked, an experimentation of satanic catharsis.”

In addition, the band have posited that the music is, “above all, polyphonic”: “full of nuances, harmonizations and superposition of musical figures; the voices are subject to this polyphonic game, since three styles are combined, this to highlight the possibilities that can be obtained from the black metal, an unfinished genre and always to be done”.

 

And indeed, “Fuck Off Jesus Christ” is a type of musical dementia — disorienting, head-spinning, unpredictable, yet managing to be cohesive and captivating despite (or perhaps because of) its unwillingness to follow a straight and simple path. The song’s tempo is in near-constant flux, and it includes contrasts between discordant, freakish, fret-jumping guitar maneuvers and rapid-fire frenzies of blasting percussion and vicious riffing, as well as a warm bubbling bass and a writhing, leaping, swirling guitar solo.

What was promised about the vocals is indeed proven true in this song as well; it combines predatory growls, blood-lusting howls, and even some clean vocalizations in an almost ecclesiastical style.

 

 

Explore “Fuck Off Jesus Christ” below, along with streams of two other previously released tracks, “En Las Fauces Del Demonio (Taedium Daemoni)” (a free download at Bandcamp) and “Agon (Bellum Est Pater Omnium)“.

Pre-order:
https://grimmdistribution.bandcamp.com/album/021gd-evil-nerfal-bellum-est-pater-omnium-2018
http://www.morbidskullrecords.com/

Evil Nerfal:
http://facebook.com/evilnerfal
http://soundcloud.com/evilnerfal

TRACK LIST:
01. Coriolan (Overture)
02. Fuck Off Jesus Christ
03. In Endless Torment
04. Foedus Versus Deus (Against The Great Drone Of History)
05. En Las Fauces Del Demonio (Taedium Daemoni)
06. Agon (Bellum Est Pater Omnium)
07. Satanic Madness Black Metal Unleashed (Instrumental)
08. Sathanas Kingdom Rises
09. Vestigial (Manifiesto De Misantropía)
10. Egmont (Finale)
Length – 40:56