Nachtvorst "Stills" CD

"Stills" the first full-length of Nachtvorst presents us 5 tracks with nearly 50 minutes playing time of emotional music in the form of Black Metal with cold and gloomy as well as melodic and fast parts to depressive black metal with some elements of post-rock/sludge music.

NACHTVORST was created in the winter of 2007 by Leopold and Erghal to compose emotional music, relying heavily on atmosphere. NACHTVORST embodies the attempt to use musical transgression to approach the boundlessness of the Kantian Sublime, not being constrained by the rules of any particular genre.

I have to say this album really took me by surprise. I’m used to Black Devastation releasing great records, but when I first listened to "Stills" I was a little disappointed. I was unfamiliar with the band and didn’t know what to expect, and I actually thought it to be just another depressive black metal band in the overflowing crowd of bland copy cat acts with little or no distinction. I don’t really know when, but suddenly something happened and I was awe-struck and I realized this surely wasn’t the case with Nachtvorst. My first impression feels so way off base now that I think about it, and I’m glad I got to review it since that means I had to listen to it several more times, and didn’t brush it off after my initial listen.
"Murmurs" definitely does it for me; this is such a magnificent track. It’s the shortest song on the album with its mere four minutes, the remaining tracks range between eight and thirteen minutes long. But I certainly wouldn’t have minded it if it was the longest one instead, ‘cause there’s something very special about the haunting feeling of impending doom that surrounds the song. It starts with just a lone heavily distorted bass, rumbling out wicked funeral-esque doom riffing, accompanied by extremely punishing and masterful drum beats. That alone is enough to make me curl up in a corner and die, but when the absolutely mesmerizing guitar line makes its appearance it induces a semi-catatonic state of mind in me, and it feels as though the world is about to collapse and there’s no point in taking another breath. It was a long, long time ago since I was so absolutely blown away by a song, and the overwhelmingly negativity of the atmosphere is supreme.
However let’s not forget about the rest of the material presented here, which is more in the same vein and with slightly less emphasis on doom and more to a purer black metal recipe. "Wandering" is another mindblowing track, where all elements of Nachtvorst’s sound are brought together in perfection; the wicked melodic guitar lines, the groove in the slow sections, the masterful power of the blasting sections and the screams gnawing its way through your mind. It’s weird-as-hell to think about the fact that one guy handles all the instruments seeing as how it’s much tighter in execution and much more adept in every department that one normally hears from such bands. But it’s still not a one-man band as another guy handles both vocals and lyrics, and he commands a very strong voice that nails several variants of screaming. And with the strong sense of melody in the riffing department, the variation in drum beats, the versatility of the song structures and the powerful production I have to say this is one amazing debut album. I could recommend it to any fan of any form of black metal, ‘cause it seems like it has it all.

Limited to 1000 copies

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