### Nightbringer: Apocalypse sun

#### 20/01/11 || The Duff

A lot of fantastic black metal has come out this year, probably making it the most promising sub-genre in recent times. With a name like Nightbringer, I’d be more likely to think of a girlscout troop playing witches and broomsticks in the warm Summer woods of Colorado Springs (and then going down onto each other’s warm Summer woods of Colorado Springs, if you get my drift… for cookies and merit badges… no, no, that’s surely too inappropriate even for GD); well, to associate a moniker like Nightbringer with girlscouts would be like comparing a life-sized stuffed teddy bear with a “I Wuv You” heart in the center of its chest with Hitler – JUST PLAIN WRONG!

See, Nightbringer do not let up on the evil; this shit rips into the malevolence like you would not believe, every once in a while veering towards dreamscapes for a second or so before swerving back into classical, dissonant and angular monstrosities. This is razor-sharp, well produced (best described as crisp with a subtle sickliness to it, like too many spoonfuls of sugar or black, cancerous malice seeping into your veins) yet strangely very melodic; a lot of layers mixed with fantastic, technical and precise musicianship and a vocalist who sounds like a mixture of classic BM rasp and that dude from Borgia, a true essence of deranged, seedy wickedness if ever there was one – the kind that would make a man hide a camera inside a toilet bowl or any one of Jay Sin’s “Anal Acrobats” DVD’s.

If I were to find a gripe, it’s that ten tracks of this is unnecessary; I can understand it must be tough letting go of some cuts when everything is of a very high caliber indeed despite some areas being better than others (this band kills when it slows down, though, I must add) – stood alone each track is an exemplary addition to well thought-out, provocative and original extreme metal, but with the album in its entirety it becomes exhausting (if the label absolutely must paraphrase from my complete body of masterwork here, I would recommend this here that “Nightbringer are the hickledy-pickledy of black metal” – you’re welcome); nine if not eight tracks would have been the wiser move. Still contender for album of the year, I’m expecting it to be nudged out a couple places shy what with Deathspell Omega and Enslaved yet to come.

- Information
- Released: 2010
- Label: The Ajna Offensive
- Website: Nightbringer MySpace
- Band
- Naas Alcameth: vocals, guitars
- Ophis: guitars
- Nox Corvus: guitars, percussion
- Marutgana: bass
- Grimnar: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. I Am I
- 02. Supplication Before the Throne of Tehom
- 03. Serpent of the Midnight Sun
- 04. Upturning the Seventh Chalice
- 05. Excitium: Litany of the Devouring Earth
- 06. Goblet of Sulfur and Poison
- 07. The Coils of Sevekh
- 08. Nephal: the Seat of Pan-Daimonium
- 09. The Utterance of Kasab’el
- 10. Fount of the Nighted God-Head