Maryland black metal quartet, Nixil, aim to write the music that will chronicle the irreversible moment when western civilisation begins to die. We live in an age of science, rationality and big tech, where the individual has never felt so isolated from those that govern them and those that protect them from tyranny. The future is something we cannot control; monumental events that will doom us have an inevitability about them; it’s easier to cling to hate than optimism if we’re to make sense of a divided world.
Into this breach step Nixil with their mystical incantations and ritual runes. You don’t need a metal band to describe the reality of your shallow consumerist society. So, take your sword and daub the blood of animals on your face and invoke the flames of death and rebirth.
Nixil operate within the blackened doom metal spectrum but take their inspiration from the raw edge of crust punk and the avant-garde chord formations of post-metal. Opener, ‘Black Earth Within’, enflames you in a blinding light of ferocious blast beats and goblin vocals and spits you out like a morsel of flesh escaping down the chin of a cannibal god. The guitar parts are always keen to explore the higher strings of the fretboard, yet they know when to slow things down and bludgeon you with the bleak onslaught of doom metal. Indeed, ‘Deaths of Our Own Design’, even takes the opening bars of Sabbath Bloody Sabbath and mixes them into six minutes of stop-start unpredictability.
The discerning listener will notice a change of mood and approach in the second-third of this record on ‘Make Me the Voice’ and ‘All Knots Untied’. The guitar melodies are more Paradise Lost Gothic-era, the vocals more vitriolic and spleen-rupturing. Do yourself a favour and sit down with this album with lyrics to hand and allow them to guide you through a mystical world of ancient Germanic runes and existential longing for liberation from the mediocrity of life on earth. ‘May This Flame Flicker’ is a sordid plea for the apocalypse. “All alive will breathe a thankful last sigh/ And as the fires grow cold, and the embers fail to glow/ May great dark sleep enfold and nothingness engulf,” rasps vocalist and conjurer, CC. The dividing line between self-hatred and self-discovery is a blurry one, just like the agonising aggression on the recent split LP from Myopic & At The Graves.
The only flaws in All Knots Untied are the occasional lapses into a dry raspy vocal that sound like a dying animal recovering from pneumonia. This brings no credit to the science of harsh singing. We need more agony and more volume in this style, like Canadian blackened death metallers, Ancient Thrones. The clean vocal shrieks on the opening track showcase a stronger projection, but the band choose not to employ this on any other song. That’s unfortunate because the music could benefit from a greater emphasis on haunting incantations and ritualistic harmonies.
Black metal is a crowded field, but Nixil find it easy to avoid cliché. Their music embraces a progressive soundscape that promises much and delivers more in abundance. Seldom does their art lose direction, and they’re quick to recover your attention when things threaten to die down. Nixil’s debut offering deserves thirty-six minutes of your time.
JVB
Verdict
Release Date: 05/03/2021
Record Label: Self Released
Standout tracks: Make Me the Voice, All Knots Untied, May This Flame Flicker Out
Suggested Further Listening: Myopic & At The Graves – A Cold Sweat of Quiet Dread (2021), Paradise Lost – Gothic (1991), Ancient Thrones – The Veil (2020)