AN NCS PREMIERE: NÒTT — “WHITE. COLD. DEATH.”

 

Those of you who’ve been visiting us for years are quite familiar with our continuing admiration of the Minnesota band Amiensus, whose releases we’ve followed closely and written about frequently ever since the appearance of their debut album Restoration in 2013. And so we were intrigued when we learned that Amiensus frontman (and Fail to Decay bassist) James Benson had started a separate solo project named Nòtt as a vehicle for creating music that combines bleak and progressive elements of black metal.

We can now reveal that Nòtt’s debut album is nearing completion and is projected for release in January of the new year, and we can go further than that — because today we’re premiering the first single from the album, a song called “White. Cold. Death.“, which is now available for free download at Bandcamp.

 

 

True to its name, this new single creates an atmosphere cloaked in wintry gloom, haunted by the cold presence of death and decay, but the music also gleams like crystalline ice shards — and strikes like a howling blizzard.

Mid-paced and very heavy at first, thanks in part to a deep bass thrum and mountainous drum booms, the song even then displays tendrils of strange, luminous melody in the midst of the desolation. When the music explodes in a torrent of blasting percussion, cyclonic riffing, and a mix of barbaric roars and incinerating shrieks, spectral chords still ring out eerily. When the drums briefly evaporate, the music brings to mind the appearance of an aurora borealis, and then later, after further bouts of percussive pummeling and crazed riffing, it shimmers like an apparition, as a prelude to a final assault of furious blasting and flickering guitar.

It’s an engrossing and dynamic track, and one that haunts the mind after it ends, just as it gets the blood pumping when it goes hard.

 

 

To repeat, “White. Cold. Death.” is now available as a free download on Bandcamp. For further info about the debut album, follow Nòtt on Facebook:

Bandcamp:
https://nottmusic.bandcamp.com/releases

Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/nottmusik