Ελληνικά
Last Updated on 10:14 PM by Lilliana Tseka
Genre: Black Metal
Country: Sweden
Label: Non Serviam Records
Year: 2017
Nazghor count six full length albums in a period of five years, which is not too unusual but also not an everyday phenomenon and offers a variety of different albums you can listen when deciding to check them out. As it was the case with me, I discovered them with their most recent “Infernal Aphorism” released last year through Non Serviam Records, and still I have no idea about all their previous full lengths, starting from 2013. The band comes from Uppsala, Sweden, and honors the melodic side of black metal as crafted by their countrymen for the last twenty years or so, while maintaining direct negative / satanic conceptual ideas in their lyrics.
Their latest record crawls up to an hour of length, as it happens with most of their releases, indicating how much music they have written in a rather short period of time. We have a loud and cold production, boosting the power of the guitars and the shrieking vocals above all, while the music could indeed be named melodic black metal, with very slight, pale post-black touches at specific moments. Nazghor throw many epic riffs in there and that is the main characteristic of “Infernal Aphorism”, which still lacks originality a bit. At various moments, it reminded me of other bands or different material without necessarily blundering the result.
The minimal background melodies of “The Darkness of Eternity” remind of something that you’re not what it is exactly, while a main part of “Deathless Serpent” is very close to what Necrophobic have written for their track “For those Who Stayed Satanic”. The album is in my opinion, too long for its own cause, as it doesn’t really expand to somewhere as it progresses and just keeps the same practice from the beginning to the end. It has tracks from four to ten minutes long, some are more aggressive than others, and others just more melodic.
I can’t say it’s a repetitive record, but it’s something you might not listen to whole in one listen. While the opening track after the introduction “Malignant Possession” has a certain intensity and drive, other moments can’t really walk, like the almost dull “Ephemeral Hunger” or the unfitting melodies of “Spawns of All Evil”. The last track is the longest and the self-titled one, it has some good ideas if you have the patience for it, even though it isn’t much of a surprise either.
“Infernal Aphorism” sounds fine but it might not step higher than all the records of its kind, despite the fact that fans of Swedish melodic black will probably love it. I believe the band has plenty of space for improvement and they should take more risks, as well as thinking through everything they put in their records.
3/6
