Nihilo - "Doom" (Art Gates Records, 2018)

Band: Nihilo
Title: Doom
Genre: Death Metal with various influences
Time: 30.43 min
Release Date: 26th October 2018
Rating: 88/100













Gonoreas, Kess'khtak, Lykhaeon: these are the bands from the land of Emmental that have been hosted on these pages during this now dying year. Today, I must add another band into that list since now we are going to talk about an old-school death metal act coming from Bern, the city that can be considered as the capital of Switzerland. Well, that band, born in 2003, is named Nihilo (is this moniker a homage to the pioneers of the Swedish death metal Nihilist?), and the here reviewed "Doom" is their third album, which has been released by the excellent Spanish label Art Gates Records. And let me say already that "Doom" is veeeery good!

Firstly, it's "veeery good" just because Nihilo plays basically a direct and violent form of old-school death metal, and you know that I adore the most violent ways to conceive the extreme metal genre! And I am saying this also because these Swiss maniacs spew forth a lot of amazing intensity throughout the 9 songs of "Doom".

Secondly, it's "veeeery good" because you can feel in "Doom" a strong will to surpass the borders of the classic death metal that allow to the band to take inspiration from various metal (and not only) genres, so every song can be a potential surprise. Nothing really experimental but here you can hear traces of doom metal (like in "Abuse of Confidence", that's mostly slow and instrumental), hyper-blast thrash metal ("Deception of Existence"), grindcore ("Deceptive World"), d-beat hardcore punk ("Antichrist") and black metal (as in the titletrack). Within them, there is also a mid-tempo song called "Menace of Wrath". In addition, there is need to say that this variety is increased a lot by the expressive, versatile and malicious vocal performance of the singer Ragulan Vivekananthan. Anyway, despite all these various influences, the band mixed them in a right way in order to create a precise and coherent style, so don't expect any confused (and confusing) mess in this album.

Thirdly, it's "veeeery good" because its best things comes just from the end of its tracklist. This means that my favorite songs, apart "Deception of Existence" (that's the third number), are the last three ones: "Deceptive World", "Antichrist" (that see the participation as guest vocalist of nothing else than Dallas Toler-Wade of Nile's fame!) and the same titletrack. This last one is maybe the most special track since it lasts even 6 minutes and ends the album in a evocative way through an obsessive and dissonant black metal sequence full of apocalyptic tunes.

Summarizing my delirium, "veeeery (fukken) good" is this "Doom", an album so intense to last only 30 always exciting minutes that are very fit to mosh like there's no tomorrow! It isn't perfect (for example, "Fueled by Suspicion" could be done better) but I am sure that this slab of versatile and ancient death metal will be loved by the fans of this music, even though it isn't purely death metal considering that Nihilo love to combine it with different genres.

P.S.:

and now, do you believe that Nihilo created their own beer, that's a Red Ale? And I can't believe that Nihilo will tour in Italy along with the Italian deathsters Antropophagus from 7th to 9th February, with included a gig in my city, Rome, on 8th February! Fuck, I hope I will be there in front of them also to mosh like a damned!

Tracklist:

1 - Abuse of Confidence
2 - Death Prevails
3 - Deception of Existence
4 - Fueled by Suspicion
5 - Orange Hazard
6 - Menace of Wrath
7 - Deceptive World
8 - Antichrist
9 - Doom

Line-up:

Ragulan Vivekananthan - vocals
Nils Hugi - rhythm guitars
Marco Kessi - lead guitars
Adrian Rohr - bass
Damiano Fedeli - drums

Guest:

Dallas Toler-Wade - vocals ("Antichrist")

FaceBook: https://www.facebook.com/nihilometal
BandCamp: https://nihilo.bandcamp.com/
Art Gates Records: http://www.artgatesrecords.com/