Anaal Nathrakh
Eschaton

Suppose you are going through a period where everything is going wrong for you. You are forced to swallow injustices continuously, you find no one willing to listen to you, everyone is indifferent to you, all busy with their affairs that are going twice as well as yours, which are worsening day by day.

Your studies are going as badly as they possibly could. Maybe you're a studious person, but now, due to various circumstances, you're getting failing grades one after another. The more you hit the books, the more your grades drop. Others don't exist, they pretend nothing is happening, in fact, secretly they even take pleasure in the fact that you're struggling. Your parents get angry because of your poor conduct, they think that while studying, you're thinking about the girls in your class, and you can't argue back although you're aware that they're wrong. Perhaps in the meantime, you've even thought about getting a job to scrape together some money, but everyone slams the door in your face with the excuse that they already have volunteers, violently ordering you to get lost. On Saturday afternoons, instead of going out with friends, you wander through the empty streets of your city center, alone, sad, and aimless. And if that weren't enough, your girlfriend left you to be with your arch-enemy. Or worse, she dumped you to be with another HER (today, if you're not gay or lesbian, you're not in fashion), and now she mocks you every time she sees you with sweet phrases like "you're a piece of shit man like all men just like you," but also "know that women are superior to men and one day will exterminate them all" or "women should no longer form any relationship with men because they would lower themselves to their abysmal level. Go away, sewer rat!" Every limit of endurance has been exceeded. By now, you've become a complete psychopath.

If the situation described above reflects you, then you should know there's a super-effective cure for all these ills. It's called "Eschaton," and its creators are none other than the ferocious Anaal Nathrakh. Hailing from the United Kingdom, the duo composed of Mick "Irrumator" Kenney and Dave "V.I.T.R.I.O.L." Hunt are among the most ruthless, extreme, deafening, and misanthropic groups out there. Known to most for their blend of black metal, industrial, and grindcore nihilism, they have created a sound so powerful and fierce it can frighten much more established formations. Theirs is an impenetrable and menacing wall of sound, towering before the eyes of the unsuspecting average listener a fan of Katy Perry (a random name), inescapably crushed by Irrumator's thousand-speed drum machine, which switches from lightning-fast blast-beats to thrash or crust tempos while maintaining incredibly high execution speed. The heavy, vaguely noisy black riffs and V.I.T.R.I.O.L.'s madhouse screams complete the rest.

"Eschaton," the band's third album, was released in October 2006 by Season Of Mist, and it is the album with which they begin to move out of the underground environment, starting to spread their name among the legions of extreme metal aficionados. In 9 tracks, they spew all their luciferian rage, enlisting two special guests such as Attila Csihar (Mayhem) and Shane Embury (Napalm Death). "Bellum Omnium Contra Omnes" opens the show, not even 10 seconds in, and it starts with an earthquake of blast beats and cutting riffs as overwhelming as a powerful river. The chorus, purely crust, repeats the song's title, a Latin expression alluding to the constant state of war humans have to live in. The first track can be considered a manifesto of their sonic blend, as the others, structurally, do not deviate much from it. However, the risk of listening to the same piece nine times in a row is far away, as all the compositions boast a precise entity, thanks to the variety of guitar work and numerous tempo changes that make 3-4 minute songs diverse and never boring. The album's highest points are reached with "When The Lion Devours Both Dragon And Child", with its epic chorus, the thrash-like "The Destroying Angel", which opens with the "S.O.S." message in Morse Code, the unsettling "Waiting For The Barbarians", and the more black metal-oriented "The Necrogeddon". A characteristic of the album is the use of samples of phrases from movies or comedies, but references to well-known books are also present; it seems that the seventh track of the album is inspired by "Thus Spoke Zarathustra," a famous book by the German philosopher Nietzsche, while the phrase opening "The Destroying Angel" ("Kill everybody in the whole world!") is taken from the British series "Blackadder II".

Listening to the CD is naturally recommended only if you're predisposed to certain types of sound, but the hate expressed by the group will possess you like a demonic spirit, making you more like a beast thirsty for revenge than a human. You will no longer be afraid of anything, and, as if by magic, your average school grades will rise again (much to the chagrin of your classmates), everyone who rudely slammed the door in your face while you were job hunting will open the doors to you in the most gentle and delicate way possible, and that cheerful ex-girlfriend of yours will lose all her pseudo-feminism with which she has been annoying you for so long, because you will find her buried by the CD's radiation together with her sweet companion.

Rest assured that after the 35 minutes of "Eschaton" life will start smiling at you again. You know what to do.