Musical extremity comes in many forms. People can argue forever on whether grindcore bands are more extreme than guttural Death Metal bands or, what seems to be the eternal question: is slower music more extreme? Are funeral Doom / Death bands harder to get than the faster-than-the-speed-of-light bands? And then you get cases of some musicians creating avant-garde music that in many ways can be considered the pinnacle of unconventional songwriting. But EN NIHIL is none of that, their extremity lies in the fact that their music is synth based and what is truly the question here is whether you consider yourself an extreme music fan or an extreme metal fan?
With quite a history on the field, EN NIHIL began producing albums back in 1995 and now they return with their latest offering, “The Approaching Darkness”. The album is solely based on synths; you will not hear guitar riffs, thundering drums, extreme vocals or anything like that. If you are familiar with the band from their previous albums you will find no surprises here. You will get all the dark industrial relentless devastation in tracks like “Vultures Reign”, merged with that power electronics schizophrenia, few surprisingly nice melodies (for instance in “The Hear Relents”) and the trademark “ongoing-earthquake” synth sounds in tracks like “Human Animal”.
It is true, if you are not used to these sort of sounds then it is going to be a challenging listen… actually it will probably be even if you are familiar with dark industrial and power electronics. That is also, in my opinion the weak point of the album, it might get a bit tiring after a while and its duration is actually close to about fifty minutes. My only other issue with the release is that I would like the music to reach a point when it would become completely paranoid, transform into an aggressive industrial part that would melt my ears. It just seems to me that the tracks do not explode, if that makes any sense.
Still with moments like the chilly intro on “Frozen Postures” and three absolutely magnificent songs, “Futile Man – The Weight of Absolution”, “The Approaching Darkness” and “Darkfall”, if you are into dark electronic music, or you like dark music in general and you do not mind something with minimalistic instrumentations then the latest work of EN NIHIL will not disappoint you.
Tracklist:
1. The Tombs of Empire 2. Frozen Postures 3. The Hearts Relent 4. Human Animal 5. Futile Man – The Weight of Absolution 6. Souls To Cease 7. Vulture Reign 8. The Approaching Darkness 9. Darkfall
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