Nahaya — Vital Alchemy

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If you’re on the hunt for some fast, angry music, look no further than NAHAYA’s latest release “Vital Alchemy”. I thought the intro, “Madness of Maenads”, was enjoyable; but it definitely doesn’t prepare you for the intensity of the rest of the album. It’s very calm and beautiful, however, when “Deific Mask” hits you’re suddenly thrust into thrashy, groovy madness. I wish I understood the purpose of having such an intro song, but I couldn’t figure it out.

“Incubator” begins with a weird Southern rock sound that doesn’t quite fit with the metal subgenre this album clearly belongs to. While it’s nice to have some variety, this is perhaps a little too much. And this only happens at the very beginning of the song, so it leaves me a little confused. “Kali Yuga” also threw me for a loop in the chorus, because the clean vocals have a very punk rock feel, which doesn’t fit in with the thrash, groove metal experience of this album either. I prefer the thrashy vocals out of everything else I hear for the most part, because it fits the music best.

My favorite song is the title track “Vital Alchemy”. The clean vocals in this are good and fit well with the song, and there’s a break from the straight trash growls that give it emotion and make it really stand out from the rest of the album. In “Midnight Fidelio”, the singing in the chorus once again makes me cringe just before the 0:50 mark. You know the end of “The Memory Remains” by METALLICA? That voice mixed with someone from the grunge era. But it just doesn’t work for this song or this album as a whole.

The final track, “Aghori Fires”, has deathcore screams thrown in amongst everything else. So, vocally the album is kind of all over the place, and I definitely had a love-hate relationship with it. There’s also a weird…noise…that I can’t quite explain at about the 1:50 mark. Maybe it kind of reminds me of the movie “The Grudge.”

The vocals can get repetitive throughout this and if it weren’t for the changes from thrashy to clean vocals in almost every song’s chorus, it could have felt like one long song, however, I think all of the songs individually were mostly good. I could see myself jamming them. I can definitely say that there’s so much different going on in this album that it doesn’t get boring, and something will catch your ear to at least make you stop and go, “Wait. What?”

Songwriting: 6
Musicianship: 7
Memorability: 5
Production: 6