Nightbringer - Apocalypse Sun

Look no further for USBM that’s black and not pleasant shades of pink.  “Original” or “groundbreaking” aren’t words associated with black metal post-1996, except disingenuously so with fruity ones influenced by Pink Floyd and The Cure.  Apocalypse Sun is an album that’s challenging on conceptual and compositional levels and revives the Hyperborean spirit and Wagnerian grandeur of the genre’s classics. 

Many knee-jerked to the smell of hype surrounding Death and the Black Work. Some resented Nightbringer’s vocabulary; others probably just lamented the album’s modest success and demanded they turn in their kvlt-cards.  Death and the Black Work epitomized an occult aesthetic, and while it carried on long after most attention spans had waned and occasionally seemed at a loss in the songwriting department, it was the rare kind of album that deserved its accolades.

Apocalypse Sun is littered to the brink of obsession with references to occult esoterica from various historical epochs and geographic locales, but Nightbringer doesn’t prioritize lyrics and concept over songwriting as is the wont of other high-minded black metal acts like Deathspell Omega, incidentally the most convenient reference point to Nightbringer’s style.  Lyrics are delivered in solemn ritualistic rasp, hints of a non-descript accent cloaking master cantor Naas Alcameth in the aura of the ancient alchemist.  For better or for worse the concepts here far transcend the scope of most listeners’ knowledge and experience, but the if the subjects of these apocalyptic rantings, however impenetrable, fuel Nightbringer’s black flame of inspiration, it’s hard to hold it against them when the result seething with such unbridled passion. 

The music is as dense and grandiose as the song titles suggest.  Apocalypse Sun is more akin structurally to a classical composition than are you average black metal albums.  Convoluted melodies and counterintuitive riff patterns stretch their legs beats and even bars beyond what you’ve been conditioned to expect by metal bands who can’t conceive of an idea lasting longer than two measures.  Apocalypse Sun is delightfully unpredictable and rewards only those listeners willing to tune all else out and devote undivided attention to unlocking its mysteries.  In short, look elsewhere for background music.

Nightbringer doesn’t make music ripe for dissection and classification, and there’s no reducing Apocalypse Sun to sum-of-its parts rote review.  It’s hard to offer more description, even harder to make a broad “must-have” recommendation.  In that sense it earns a “download first” tag - though let’s not fool ourselves that this isn’t the SOP anyway - because four out of five listeners will find tackling this seventy-minute marathon of nightmarish neoclassical metal a prohibitively daunting undertaking.  But there are those among us who crave a challenging listen, an album unapologetically unique and utterly fearless.  For those listeners Nightbringer delivers.  Apocalyspe Sun is the album that makes this job worth doing, the diamond in the rough, already the black metal album year.

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*Comments:

May 5, 2010

Reviewer: Matt

Release Date: May 11th, 2010
Label: The Ajna Offensive /
Avantgarde

TRACK LISTING

1.  I am I
2.  Supplication before the
     Throne of Tehom
3.  Serpent of the Midnight Sun
4.  Upturning the Seventh Chalice
5.  Excitium- Litany of the
      Devouring Earth
6.  Goblet of Sulfur and Poison
7.  The Coils of Sevekh
8.  Nephal- the Seat of
      Pan-Daimonium
9.  The utterance of Kasabe'l
10.  Fount of the Nighted God-head

Total playing time:  1:06:07