Nachtmystium
Assassins: Black Meddle Part 1

THE REVIEW

Unfortunately, there is a persistent rumor going around that true black metal and all its progressions or digressions remain a priority solely for the European underground, or more specifically, the Scandinavian one, but perhaps those who say so fail to see, or perhaps pretend not to see, what the rest of the world is doing in this genre.

Under examination in this review is America, which with entities like Xasthur, Leviathan, Wolves in the Throne Room, these Nachtmystium, and many others, is redefining the genre from within, contaminating it without stripping it of the malice, depression, malevolence, fury, and visionary nature that it has always been made of, since the first bands of this movement took their first steps in the early '80s; nobody sees them as mentioned, or at least few recognize the genuineness and originality inherent in American black metal (as well as in Italian black metal, see Spite Extreme Wings, which with the new Vltra have written the extreme album of the year, together with this Assassins).

Well, I couldn't care less about what I hear around and fully enjoy this marvel, being aware of how lucky I am to have noticed it.

Marvelous, yes, because everything shines with a fantastic light here, a light that few, very few indeed, possess in these times of musical scarcity; Nachtmystium are fantastic, period!! These genuine geniuses manage to combine, as inferred from the subtitle of the album and the first track which the sharp-eared will already have recognized as a tribute to the great masters of seventies psychedelia, Pink Floyd, the fury of a genre like the aforementioned black metal with the astral, epic, emotionally overloaded openings of the best Pink Floyd with disarming simplicity.

It's a journey to be followed and lived in its entirety, where you will find outbursts à la Emperor, black'n'roll style last Darkthrone (the title track is eloquent in this sense), prog, avant-garde à la Arcturus and similar and a lot, really a lot of '70s psychedelia, acidic, cosmic, volatile, that shines in all its astral brightness especially in the final track, divided into three parts for the occasion, where the atmospheres become rarefied, differentiating from the rest of the album, everything becomes intangible, until something triggers the ascent into space, whether it is a sax gone mad and almost jazz (courtesy of Bruce Lamont from Yakuza, another spectacular band even if very distant from the stylistic coordinates of those reviewed), or a guitar soaring reverberated into unknown and unexplored places is hard to say, yet these Nachtmystium manage to transport such a genre into another, profound dimension (perhaps also thanks to the recording by the great Sanford Parker already at work with Unearthly Trance, and keyboardist and vocalist in the great Minsk), vortex-like, alienating, and highly emotional.

I join the myriad of accolades being lavishly bestowed upon them: Nachtmystium have released the best black metal album of the last decade, without fear of exaggeration.