(We present Vizzah Harri‘s review of the latest album by Toronto-based Nächtlich, which was released last month by Dreadful Lust Productions.)
Nächtlich have been around for a while now, inflicting a raw, vile and infernal brand of black metal on Canadian shores since their self-titled EP in 2017. Their discography is pretty extensive already and boasts no less than 3 demos, the same number in EP’s, ten splits with various other dealers of raw black, and on May 10th this year they released their third full-length, Exaltation of Evil.
Splits
Their name means ‘nocturnal’ in German and when I first saw them recommended on Bandcamp it was interesting that a cover of such brazen ’90s worship would be so far up the recommended list. It takes some level of confidence to take a cave-ritual band photo with the no fvcks given B-movie grade of ‘A Blaze In The Northern Sky’ and proceed to slap it on the cover of your third full-length album. It might just reach kvlt status in years to come.
they’ve done it before in even more defiant style
Where their earlier work sometimes went into territory rarer than a blue steak opting for pure roadkill containing some of the most furious, caustic and grating tones one can find in raw black metal, their latest effort changes tack ever so slightly. Forgoing the trap of deeming something as a step up or down, this record transverses into a slightly altered dimension in sound. Instead of adhering to infecation of creative ability, Nächtlich decided to expand.
Demos
Nothing about the sound on this new release brings forth any ideations of parody or pastiche. Instead, it can be described as having a pure Tartarean ambience inflected with vile excoriated rasps slathered in a cloud of redolent putrefaction.
The reference to one of the seminal 2nd wave attacks of the nineties is apt for more than just the cover art. Instead of ripping off one the most beloved records in metal history, they went and fried up an omelette du homage of an era. Nächtlich wanted us to imagine being in that cave, or at least that they recorded it in the same place they took the picture. If one fuses early Dimmu with an ear for an abattoir’s meat hook while meditating on ‘Blaze’, one might just be able to comprehend the kind of aesthetic, feel and composition Nächtlich went for here. What follows is a track-by-track review.
1
Reviling human flesh opens with some ambience set squarely in a dungeon sans dragon(s) before the full scope of what’s going to be showcased on this album is introduced. Drums driving to an oblivion of exalted darkness act as precursor for an opening riff at 1:16 that hasn’t hit this hard since Nocturnal Departure’s Dismal Existence, or Vredensdal’s Cold Northern Hellscape.
Scorched-earth bestial growls ascending amidst rousing voluminous synthy excrescence marred with beastly grunts akin to what Peter Freuchen must’ve sounded like when he was encased in an icy sarcophagus and cut himself out with a dagger made from his own excrement. Icy, bestial and frantic, yet measured and with a will and agency pulsed forth as only those having had brushes with everlasting nothingness can truly evoke.
I don’t like pre-empting anyone with any nudges or winks or heavy-handed idolatry, but I do feel that Reviling human flesh is a perfect opener and that it more than deserves a comfortable place in end of year short-form adulation. With the introductory riffs going into double time before a lull with the tone of a rock battered by blackened surf, it picks up again with ASMR levels of drums; that is anomalous situational metallic revisionism, otherwise known as a suitably meritorious raillery. This song goes through movements, with more moments of epiphany and elliptical perfection than bands with much longer histories have to offer.
2
By the time the title track envelops your auditory cortex, it is undeniable that we should not have judged that cover. It’s definitely the opening of the Exaltation of Evil where my Nocturnal Departure-radar went haywire, I’ve heard that same dark tone of dungeon-synth depths immersing before. Though the bands both do a kind of raw riffy-black, the similarities do end there unless you’d like to see them as two sides of an obsidian coin, the one that pushes and the one that pulls. Ascendants of the voided planes both.
Here the opening prelude is longer, it lulls, thunder claps, before the song blasts forth with synth-basked glory interspersed with inspired fills, one of which is a hapax. Three-quarters of the runtime we go into a doomy bass-driven segue, but the singer compels us to exalt, a clarion call each time, to pick up the fury.
3
Dungeon synths and drowned-out cavern liturgy percussion could not prepare you for the heavy metal toned guitars drenched in punk oomph provided by the bass. If you want to know how to record a black metal album with synths that really come to fore without being remembered or slated as a synth-black metal band: spin this album on repeat. Pagan victory lets the bass shine through with martial drums hurrying us along to the self-checkout area.
4
Within My Desolate Empire is the second shortest track on the album, with the others around the 6-, 7- and 8-minute marks. Choosing to place the title track early in the album instead of here, smack dab in the middle, the atmosphere is bumped up with a few turns of the dial and if Nächtlich chose this track as anchor it can be seen as the quasi-thesis of fortississimo in mesto vivace.
The vocals are drowned out a bit by the storm blåsting in the foreground. Nothing is truly unconventional anymore; it just happens to be a time where experimentation is pushed to the limits of what our palates for darkness allow as listenable.
5
Eyes Towards The Idol compels us again to nod our heads to keys fused to fuzzy, near-rock rhythms. Nächtlich were of the mind that one could create an album that perpetually ascends with some calmness in-between. The reprieve does not last long; before we hit the half-way mark our narrator voices their disapproval for slowing things down. Beastly metamorphosed into the ferine, a raving maximalist’s fever dream of what can be done with raw vocals. With the offbeat synths that accentuate the climax over despairing wolfen moon howls, we’re met with a lycanthropic trance ritual spliced with gang-howls, melancholic chants and the ever-presence of drums driving towards an oblivion never sated.
•• @gaberealhell uploaded this amazing video of their show in California from February 3rd this year:
6
Autosarcophagic Descension is a continuation of the musical ideas, albeit more compact, found on the previous LP, and we’re square in Pale Swordsman territory. Many a writer was confused with that album’s hype; this one was not. Autosarcophagic descension can be seen as the musician’s term for the corpse pose, my favorite yogic position. Melodic interludes can either be a welcome reprieve from relentless aural assaults or utterly forgettable; it leans towards the former, for the album closer is big in scope, and demands your full attention.
7
Starsight Of The Outer Regions was first found on their Third Ritual EP. The re-recorded version fits really well with the rest of the album and this track alone shows the move in a direction of more clarity in sound, a bit less raw: some more bombast. Personally, I like both versions, however I am a sucker for synths and they stand out quite a bit more on the new album. It’s not that it is less raw in essence, the production is just a bit clearer.
EP’s
The closer sets off in doomy lethargy, but if there’s anything we’ve learned by now it is that Nächtlich have the propensity to rev tempos up on a dime. They dropped any pretense that they were here to noodle around and ‘roided-up the final chapter. With a contagious bass-rhythm and punk-inflected guitar, dungeon-slaked synths and unmistakenly raw dark vocals, we’ve got a band here that work extremely well in unison.
UE and crew have employed production, mixing and mastering skills of a standard that could seamlessly blend raw black into the dungeons of yesteryear with a pop and sparkle worthy of a vinyl even when heard on the streams of this age of overflowing obscurity induced by mass-production and -consumption.
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