AN NCS PREMIERE: MIST OF NIHIL — “THE LAST WOUND OF GAIA”

 

Last year the Greek band Mist of Nihil released their debut EP Buried Laments, which my comrade DGR greeted with open arms in his review: “The group are like crashing waves on the side of a rocky cliff and can bring on that drowning feeling that you’re looking for when you come to the doom genre.” Now the band are on the verge of releasing their debut album A Faint Aurora, with the kind of attention-grabbing cover art that will make it very difficult to overlook. The music is going to make its mark, too — as you’re about to discover through our premiere of the album’s final track, “The Last Wound of Gaia“.

This long song joins together passages of shimmering, ephemeral beauty, blood-pumping riffs and pulsating lead-guitar melodies, cavernous full-throated growls — and of course an aura of aching melancholy. Sombre, heavy chords that drag like chains across a killing floor link arms with high, clear, cascading guitar arpeggios that shine with changing light against a backdrop of darkness, very much like the auroras of the album’s title.

 

 

The song is a dynamic one, ever-changing, and the music is so entrancing that the nearly 11 minutes of its length seem to pass quickly. So much care has gone into the composition, with so many layers of sound and mood unfolding as the time passes, that if you’re like me, the first thing you’ll want to do after the song ends is play it again, both to hear what made you smile the first time and discover what you missed as well.

There is more icing on this cake, too: While lyrics are admittedly of secondary importance in extreme metal, it’s worth noting that the lyrics to “The Last Wound of Gaia” eloquently trace the degradation of the ancient earth by  “the sprawling nations of mankind”, with a heavy price to be paid:

The gods of strife
Shall feast upon us this day
And every day hence
Until the end of time

 

Another song from the album called “The Lake” debuted last month, and we’ve included the stream of that one below as well.

A Faint Aurora will be released in November 2015. It was produced, mixed, and mastered by Vaggelis Theodorakis, and the artwork was created by Giannis Nakos.  The track list is as follows:

1) Desires of a Shadowed Notion
2) In the Heart of Malevolence
3) When Silence Awakens
4) Forest of Lethe
5) Stone’s Marrow
6) The Lake
7) A Dream Sublime
8) Frail Heritage
9) Wind of a Thousand Winters
10) Root of all Plagues
11) The Last Wound of Gaia

https://www.facebook.com/Mistofnihil
http://mistofnihil.bandcamp.com