band: The Nihilistic Front album: Procession to Annihilation year: 2013
genres: death doom metal origin: Australia
genres: death doom metal origin: Australia
I CAN'T HEAR YOU OVER THE SOUND OF MELTING CITY!!
An ambulance siren, people shouting, buildings collapsing,
maybe a helicopter… that’s what should sound when you dare to listen to this
merciless album and hit play to the first song. How many metal albums have you listened
that kick off the opening track with a sampled war scene? A complete post would
be needed to list them. Australia based duo The Nihilistic Front gets rid of
the traditional approach for bringing the listener to an apocalyptic stage and
develops that feeling throughout the album by means of the traditional
instrumentation setup but used in an extreme and almost painful way that will
make you feel the misery explicitly depicted in the cover art of the album. “Procession to Annihilation” is the first output I hear from The Nihilistic Front, but they
are not a newbie band whatsoever. Those angry fellas had already issued three
albums before. For the sake of objectivity I chose not to listen to them until
I finish this review.
The duo manages a death doom metal skeleton. Even though
this last statement could make you stop reading this because you surely know
how a death doom metal album sounds like, stay because those guys are more into
relentless death and black metal than into doom, thus the sound of this project
is rawer and heavier than the average death doom bands, and as a satisfaction guaranty,
I can tell you that their sound is weird enough to meet even the most avant-garde
hipster requirements.
Once you start this procession to annihilation there is no way
back, you are taken to a trashed place. Since the very first track “Confronted
by the Obscure” The Nihilistic Front cautions you that you are now crowning among
debris in a place in war. Remember how Slayer’s classic song “Raining Blood” started?
Drums foretold that something gruesome was about to happen, similar spine-chilling
drums are found in this first track. Throughout the album, guitars are so crushing,
so heavy and so slow that you can feel the weight of pieces of concrete and
metal falling upon you. The sludge guitar effects evoking masters Corrupted,
helped by lots of guitar noises create the sound of a bunch of metal structures
bending and crushing. The metropolitan apocalyptic picture is also developed by
a suitable industrial metal influence: programmed slow drums that not only
unveil the mark that Godflesh has left but also remember other “human” drums like
those from Disembowelment and their steadfast usage of its double bass. The
worship to that vanished doom metal legend is evident in this album, especially
in its death metal-biased brutality. This fact should not be shocking, seemingly
these guys move into the death metal circles running some other death and black
metal projects. With this in mind we take a glance to the homonymous song of
the album which kicks off with a nice dosage of fast death metal riffage and
performing the change of tempos patented by Disembowelment.
The album is even more upset once we take in count vocals.
Were you in a trivia show on tv, you would surely guess the use of deep growls
for this CD, and you’d be right, but your answer would not be complete since
The Nihilistic Front has an ace up its sleeve that will make the difference.
Quite brutal guttural vocals are featured of course, but there is another
voice, a “clean” one that sometimes speaks with some noisy distortion aiding
the industrial feeling and taking in mind industrial doomsters Zaraza whose
music can actually join the ingredients in this blender too. Clean vocals
chanting slow melodies in an almost hypnotic and catatonic fashion can also be
found. These voices are sometimes looped and echoed and introduce an extra entity:
some black metal screams with slight distortions and effects, much in the vein
of Esoteric. As you can see, the already brutal and miserable atmosphere is
endowed with this rich and twisted vocal work turning out into an authentically
chaotic experience.
The band has developed quite an original sound. Maybe the
whole concoction can be compared with the ambitious project The Sad Sun, especially
in vocals and the industrial apocalyptic feeling. Nevertheless, it is
straightforward to realize that The Nihilistic Front has a different concept of
doom, a more brutal and aggressive one while The Sad Sun was more focused in
drone and atmospheric stuff. The Sad Sun brought you there to stare the wrecked
area whereas The Nihilistic Front put you right below a building that is about
to collapse upon you. Both are striking approaches. If you are into that
non-romantic way of listening to doom metal you should not miss this one. It is
brutal, slow, ultra heavy, noisy and yet atmospheric… what else can your
eardrums ask for?
Official site
