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Well, here we are. As Metalsucks will be closing up for the year on December 16th, this article concludes an entire year writing Shit That Comes Out Today for Metalsucks. I’ll be posting an update with my first article of next year if anything comes out in the meantime worth checking out, but for now check out three new releases coming out today.
Anaal Nathrakh’s seemingly permanent problem — that it will never top it’s brilliant debut, the filthy The Codex Necro – isn’t unique to them, nor even unique to metal. Like Nas — who arrived with Illmatic, one of the hip-hop’s most influential albums, and has subsequently tried to top it for almost two decades, at best coming somewhat close and at worst falling embarrassingly short — their first official effort set an impossibly high watermark. But unlike Nas, the band have never given the impression that they’re trying to recapture lightening in a bottle, which could be why The Codex Necro feels less like a fluke and more like a sturdy foundation for the band’s career. After introducing clean singing on their next album (Domine Non Es Dignus), it was clear if they couldn’t shoot past their debut’s excellence, they could fire to the left of it. So while Anaal Nathrakh have never been as good as they were on Codex Necro – and arguably never will be — their catalog has been remarkably consistent in its wake. Nas positioned himself to have to compete with hip-hop’s brightest stars while his was on the wane; Anaal Nathrakh have only had to compete with themselves. Even in a relatively diminished capacity, there are few that are more fierce and eviscerating as them.
So while the band have been wobbling back and forth between great albums (Eschanton, The Constellation of the Black Widow) and spotty ones (Dignus, Hell is Empty and All the Devils are Here), they haven’t come as close to the viciousness of their debut as they do on Passion (oddly enough, their most subdued album title yet). Though it lacks Codex’s red-eyed anger and grime-caked production, it tweaks the band’s post-Necro additions — big choruses and tempos below that of “ridiculously fast” — to seeming perfection. Perhaps it’s unfair to hold them to an impossible standard, but if one must, Passion is as good as the band can get. “All killer, no filler” feels literal in its context.
I tried to give Gnaw Their Tongues, the one man ambient-black-industrial band from the Netherlands, a shot after a recent profile in Decibel piqued my interest; unfortunately, it’s just not for me. Gnaw Their Tongues’ noise – I’m not sure it’s “music” in the traditional sense – makes Lustmord sound like he has a tight sense of structure (and I say that as someone who likes Lustmore, albeit in limited doses). Whatever it is that people find appealing about this – I’m not getting it. Maybe I’d understand it as the soundtrack to an experimental horror movie or something, but I just can’t imagine ever sitting around and being like “Lemme throw some GTT on.”
But I do love the name Gnaw Their Tongues, and all the graphics I’ve seen associate with the band, and the title of the song “The Gnostic Ritual Consumption of Semen as Embodiment of Wounds Teared in the Soul,” the video for which was sent to us by Tom Wills. (They’ve got some other songs with awesome titles, too, like “…Pestilince Stalks Forth” and “All the Dread Magnificence of Perversity.”) I hope some of you dig it more than I do.
-AR
Nachtmystium’s Black Meddle, Pt. 1 was one of the best albums of 2008, ending up at the top or near the top of most MS staffers’ top ten lists that year. So, naturally, Nachtmystium fans everywhere have been asking the question, “Hey, where the fuck is Black Meddle, Pt. II?”
Well, hey, guess what? The band has issued an update to that very query on their MySpace page:
