AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: FIAT NOX — “OPIUM TO INSIDIOUS SLUMBER II”

In 2021 we had the honor of premiering In Contemptuous Defiance, a new EP by the German black metal band Fiat Nox, which followed their 2021 debut album The Archive of Nightmares. In an accompanying review we wrote that the EP “further elevates the place of Fiat Nox as a band capable of creating marvelously dynamic and multi-faceted music that gets the blood racing with its muscular, hard-charging aggression but also creates wholly enthralling atmosphere through its emotionally powerful melodies”. In Contemptuous Defiance was also home to a song (“Amok Hymn“) that we named to our list of the year’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs.

Allowing no grass to grow beneath their iron-shod hooves, Fiat Nox followed that EP with another one in 2022 — Demanifestation (Hymns of Destruction and Nothingness). Unfolding across three tracks and 30 minutes, it provided a bracing amalgam of blistering and blasting blackened fury, engrossing melodies, and frightening, esoteric atmosphere worthy of the record’s magnificently hellish cover art.

With their creative fires still burning hot, Fiat Nox have readied yet another EP for release later this month. Entitled Opium To Insidious Slumber, it consists of two songs, and today we’re premiering a lyric video for the second of those — “Opium To Insidious Slumber II“.

We ought to provide at least a hint of what happens in the first song, which at 9 1/2 minutes is the longer of the two. It chills the skin with ominous ringing tones whose dissonance creates unearthly visions while the drums batter and blast — and then the music rises up, like a towering beast that turns the skies to fire. The scale and sweep of the music is immense and terrifying, creating a kind of decimating, end-of-the-world splendor that takes the breath away. Only at the end are uneasy breaths allowed, as the music drifts away into a freezing void.

Both in that song and in the one you’re about to hear, the vocals are undiluted vitriol, capable of broiling the mind with their fury and hatred. But they don’t attack right away in “Opium To Insidious Slumber II“. At the outset the song creates a sharp contrast with the fantastical firestorm unleashed by the preceding track. Mysterious and inviting, the opening notes ripple, ring, and throb. But with a harrowing howl, the music blazes and thunders again.

Again, Fiat Nox create a spectacle, but there’s no mistaking the feeling of sorrow and dismay that courses through those sweeping sounds, nor the raging disgust that the vocals vent in gravel-chewing snarls and doubled howls of unchained belligerence. The music reverberates like massed chimes, saturating the senses while the drumming keeps the pulse-rate high with its hammering and tumbling momentum.

Is there any time for deep breaths in this second song? Only briefly, in the song’s penultimate movement when a lone guitar sizzles and the drums slowly pound — just before the storm of fire and ice resumes in the finale.

It’s obvious from this new EP that fury still fuels Fiat Nox, and equally obvious that their grasp of soul-shaking melody is still as strong as ever, and portrayed here on a vast scale. And if you want to be simultaneously blasted to smithereens, you’ve come to the right place for that too.

Opium To Insidious Slumber was mixed and mastered by Emanuel George at Pentagram Studio, known for his work with such bands as Rotting Christ and Necromantia. The EP will be released by the Crawling Chaos label on April 28th, in CD and digital formats. The label recommends it for fans of Mgła, Uada, or Misþyrming.

CRAWLING CHAOS:
https://www.facebook.com/thecrawlingchaosrecords/
https://thecrawlingchaosrecords.bandcamp.com/

FIAT NOX:
https://www.facebook.com/Lightthetorches/
https://lightthetorches.bandcamp.com/