Nadir's Shadows Spread Farther on "Tenebrae" (Early Track Stream)
The last time I wrote about Nadir, I was very pleased with what I heard. Now, three years later as I listen to their upcoming debut album Extinction Rituals, I think I was missing out on a key piece of what makes the band great — and, at the same time the band’s only improved at what they’re doing. While, yes, on this upcoming album the Norwegian blackened hardcore group still delivers “blistering aggression” (I’m quoting myself, here) what makes Extinction Rituals fantastic, and what their debut EP The Great Dying pioneered, is how it combines black metal and hardcore in a complex, interesting way that delivers a lethal blow to the brainstem. ‘Blackened hardcore’ can mean a lot of things, some of them very uninteresting, but Nadir starts from a point of clear fascination on both sides of the equation, and that passion translates audibly into a riff-heavy record that doesn’t treat any of its influences as mere texture.
It seems like aggression is more of an outcome than an intentional goal, so if there’s one thing I suggest observing on this record, it’s how seamlessly the band traverses the landscape of extreme music without ever losing their sense of identity. At the record’s core is raw emotion, and Nadir, not content to limit themselves, drain every musical well they can find to express these emotions. You’ll find heavy metal-esque melodies all throughout the record as well as uncompromising black metal, and hell, even some proto-thrash riffs plucked from the primordial stew of the late 1980s. All of this is often placed audaciously close to some seriously ready-to-mosh hardcore segments: you know, the stuff that forcibly evacuates 30+ year olds (that’s me!) from the pit on pain of death and/or losing our glasses.
We’re premiering “Tenebrae” today, which launches off with scalding tremolo riffs and subsequently launches its way right into the chaotic stew of hardcore and scorched heavy metal that Nadir excels at. The part at 2:44: yeah, that’s where I’d be bailing out to the back of the room.
…
…
The band comments:
“Tenebrae” was the first song written for Extinction Rituals and we needed it to set the tone for what we want to accomplish. This track is for us an unapologetic outburst of aggression and desperation.
…
Extinction Rituals releases May 5th independently via Bandcamp.
