vworar

Rebel Wizard: Heavy Negative Wizard Metal for Summer Weather

vworar

It’s too hot to be frostbitten. Yes, the window units are on full blast, attempting to thwart the menace of heat, but it is here to stay for yet a few months… but what of music? Surely the most frostbitten and grim black metal would solve this problem. Not quite. Most summers, the chilling music goes away, not fully fitting the sun-baked heat of American mid-year. It’s hard for the average, seasonally-obsessed black metal fan to find that perfect summer soundtrack (mostly due to its near-unanimous hatred among black metal fans’ ranks). Thankfully, there is Rebel Wizard. Listen to new single “The Poor and Ridiculous Alchemy of Christ and Lucifer and Us All” below.

Granted, it should be immediately obvious that Rebel Wizard isn’t exactly black metal. As evidenced by the wondrous KK Downing and Steve Harris-inspired guitar work, mastermind Bob “nksv” Nekrasov has no true intention of “being black metal” with this project. Compared to his nom du plume’s eponymous project, nksv maintains a balance here, counteracting Nekrasov’s harsh, impenetrably noisy gloom with bouncing, metallic energy, all wrapped in his now signature harsh haze.

That isn’t to say this is meant to be “fun,” though. Sure, these are riffs to bob one’s head to and raise a fist high, but that isn’t nksv’s intent. Rebel Wizard is “heavy negative wizard metal” — pure, angry pessimism made into music. As such, any happiness one feels is precisely their own and wholly experiential. Heavy metal being happy is purely nostalgic, ushering in immediate associations with motorcycles and a few too many beers. Fine, true, but not for nksv. What can be agreed upon is… this sounds like black metal for summer. From the depths of Tasmania, Rebel Wizard’s blackened take on classic metal finally solves the problem of “temperature” in an otherwise frigid genre. Also: fuck summer.

Voluptuous Worship of Rapture and Response is out August 17th on Prosthetic Records

From the artist:

I suspect the song “The Poor and Ridiculous Alchemy of Christ and Lucifer and Us All” is really a homage to being able to overuse the word “and” much to the poisoned beak of yesteryear English teachers. But that’s a pretty awful type of homage really so we added in words like poor and ridiculous and alchemy and Christ and Lucifer etc as these symbols are synaptic raptures within our psyche — especially those that represent characters; Jesus/Lucifer… surprisingly, these characters and us still thwart their nonsense within this realm with no hope of going away and it is really quite ridiculous.

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