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Nifelheim: Envoy of Lucifer
02/04/08 || theProphet
I never really heard anything of Nifelheim before getting this album, I saw them live once, and I knew they were the band of Bröderna Hårdrock and for some reason they were really highly regarded within the scene. They were good live, great even, but as it turned out, I was yet to experience them in their entire splendour.
Then I got the album, and when the first song started playing, I immediately understood…
Oh man, the fucking songwriting, few metal bands can write songs with such hit potential and still remain credible. Listen to the fucking chorus of “Gates of Damnation”, fuck me with an inverted cross and call me a nun, ‘cause I get wet just thinking of it. The intro riff to the opening tune, the great “Infernal Flame of Destruction” is probably the greatest first impression I ever got from an album, save perhaps for Deathspell Omegas “First Prayer”, but that’s beside the point. Other highpoints are the songs “Storm of the Reaper”, “Evil is Eternal”, the title track and “Belial’s Prey”. Couple that with the greatest of them all, the anthemesque closer “No More Life” and you realize that I have mentioned almost the entire tracklist at this point. It’s just that great, and that fucking consistent!
Apparently, no computers were used during the recording of this album, and that shows somewhat. If I have one beef with “Envoy of Lucifer”, it’s that the production is somewhat thin and during my sex starved nights, I dream of this album with the production of Watain’s “Sworn To the Dark”. Anyway, the guitars sound kinda toothless at times, and the bass is not very audible at all times, these are problems that disappear after repeated listens, strangely. I suspect this effect to be the work of Satan, in His Glory!
I must mention the songwriting again, so consider the facts:
Nifelheim has made an album that is to black metal hit songs what mr. Creozote is to food, namely full enough of it to burst (and the nominees for lamest analogies ’08 are…). This they achieve while also sounding utterly kvlt, the good way. The impression I get from listening to Nifelheim is one of total dedication to their music, this is not a band, but a lifestyle. I lost my track here, but the punchline was something along the lines of kvlt black metal hacks such as Xasthur and Nargaroth taking notes on how to be trve isn’t a matter of having the fewest bandmembers, shittiest songs, sloppiest playing or worst production. Get the point?
It is a fucking disgrace that this didn’t make my best-of-2007 list, and this fact I blame on its late release.
Hail the Envoy of Lucifer!
8 tsunamis of piss out of 10.
- Information
- Released: 2007
- Label: Regain Records
- Website: Nifelheim MySpace
- Band
- Hellbutcher: vocals
- Vengeance From Beyond: guitars
- Apocalyptic Desolator: guitars
- Tyrant: bass
- Insulter Of Jesus Christ!: drums
- Tracklist
- 01. Infernal Flame of Destruction
- 02. Evocation of the End
- 03. Gates of Damnation
- 04. Claws of Death
- 05. Storm of the Reaper
- 06. Envoy of Lucifer
- 07. Evil Is Eternal
- 08. Raging Flames
- 09. Belial’s Prey
- 10. No More Life
