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Ad Nauseam > Nihil Quam Vacuitas Ordinatum Est > Reviews
Ad Nauseam - Nihil Quam Vacuitas Ordinatum Est

Maddening Psychosis - 80%

noisevortex, April 3rd, 2020

Stepping out of the shadows of your influences can be a hard task for any artist. Even more so when you wear them on your sleeve. Quickly a band will be “derivative” or “unoriginal” when they cannot bring their own thoughts to the table. The return of Gorguts and rise of Ulcerate inspired many to take up their instruments but few have something to set themselves apart from the rest.

Ad Nauseam make their debut with Nihil quam vacuitas ordinatum est and prove that worship must not equal subservience. The band’s style of death metal can be traced back to the aforementioned giants of the genre. But with great care and devotion, Ad Nauseam craft an album that ranks among the best in technical death metal.

By the time Ad Nauseam made their debut, the members of the band already had a history spanning more than a decade. The group of four originally released a demo and a debut album under the name Death Heaven. Years later, following personal and artistic growth, it became apparent that the new material also required a new identity. In 2011, Ad Nauseam was born. Yet, four more years passed before the album was ready to see the light of day.

Nihil… is a tome of dizzying and ominous technical death metal that takes many listens to parse. While technically proficient the band doesn’t have to compromise on the atmospheric capabilities of their music. The tracks are harrowing and psychotic, the instruments a sandstorm of intricacy. Opener My Buried Dream surprises with sudden, headbanging grooves and its bitterly melodic climax, a highlight in all of technical death metal.

Similarly, Into the Void Eye is a feverdream of moody atmospheric sections, torn through by neurotically spasming guitars. Following the peak of the track, we are left haunted by a horrifying section of screeching strings. One of many orchestral moments spread throughout the album that potently fleshes out the foreboding atmosphere. Like on The Black Veil of Original Flaw, one of the two hulking compositions at the end of the tracklist. At the end of the album’s most brooding track, the orchestral section builds an unnerving tension that goes unresolved as the last track abruptly blows it away.

Ad Nauseam leave nothing to chance in their music. The band even goes so far as to build their own equipment to achieve the sound they are looking for. In an interview with Parat Magazine, vocalist and guitarist Andrea P. details the DIY gear the band deployed for Nihil…:

“So we experimented a lot to obtain the Ad Nauseam sound that basically had to be rich, dynamic, warm, dark and natural. To obtain exactly what we wanted, we had to start from scratch, designing our own equipment. For example Matteo B. designed and built 2 high quality bass loudspeakers, a 1×18” and a 1×12”, Andrea S. built his snare drum using an unusual technique to achieve more dynamics and power. I am an electronic engineer, which helped me to design and built 3 guitar preamplifiers, 1 bass preamplifier, a mastering compressor, a tube microphone preamplifier and a spring reverb unit, while Matteo G. helped me for the machining aspects.”

The resulting sound is one like no other in extreme music. Ad Nauseam’s aesthetic is closest to a Neurosis album. Warm, dark, dusty and organic. The guitars have an acidic bitterness to them that underlines the album’s psychotic atmosphere. The dry rattle of the bass mixes well with the compact snare as the thud of the bass drum rounds out the low end of the mix. The vocals at the front are a withered husk situated somewhere between Luc Lemay and Portal’s The Curator. Together with the remarkably dynamic mix, Nihil… boasts some of the most satisfying production in extreme music.

With Nihil quam vacuitas ordinatum est, Ad Nauseam make a stunning entry to modern technical death metal. Their influences merely a homage, they display character and craftiness in engineering their sound. Their debut is a veritable glimpse into madness with each musical motif as but a grain of sand in the storm that is Nihil quam vacuitas ordinatum est.

Attribution: https://www.noisevortex.com/articles/looking-back-ad-nauseam-nihil-quam-vacuitas-ordinatum-est/

All the rage, enchained and calculated. - 80%

ConorFynes, November 13th, 2015

Avant-garde. Technical. Dissonant. These are the terms I've most often seen used to describe Nihil Quam Vacuitas Ordinatum Est at every twist and turn, so I figured it'd be prudent to get them in the open as soon as possible. Add to that the comparisons with Gorguts, Ulcerate and Deathspell Omega, though in truth I only really agree with those first two in the case of Ad Nauseam. I have heard this unholy trifecta used to compare a growing number of new black/death metal bands. At one point, modern classical-influenced, atonal tech metal really warranted the avant-garde label. But as the avant-garde ultimately seeks to reshape the current sphere, I'd say this objective was already accomplished sometime in the wake of Fas - Ite, Maledicti in Ignem Aeternum.

Ad Nauseam are swirling, challenging, and apply to virtually any synonym of 'dissonant' you can think of, but they aren't experimental. Gorguts' Obscura laid the groundwork for this album's sound nearly twenty years ago. What Ad Nauseaum is, however, is one of the best examples of a new band taking a fresh handle on this sound and imbuing it with the same attention to detail and calculated focus we'd expect to hear from its progenitors.

Nihil Quam Vacuitas Ordinatum Est took five years for Ad Nauseam to record in full, and the time and effort really shows. This debut may come as a familiar sound to fans of the great Ulcerate. Sludgy death timbres are further weaponized with an ever-busy sense of composition that far surpasses the garden variety US tech death in the sense of giving its demonstration of technique real weight and substance. Leaving a description of Ad Nauseam as 'sludgy tech death' might get partways towards describing their sound, but their reality does without some of the less tactful elements of either school. Unlike sludge, Ad Nauseam never let their angers run amok. Even this album's most chaotic and noisy bits (the second half of "Into the Void Eye" stands out in this regard) sound akin to an enchained beast. You know said beast could cause untold havoc if Ad Nauseam ever chose to let it go, but they keep it under lock and key, guiding their rage along with utter calculation.

Even if Ad Nauseam's take on death metal isn't necessarily 'new' per se, that doesn't stop Nihil Quam Vacuitas Ordinatum Est from being an incredibly challenging listen that requires patience to fully unlock. The first time I put it on felt like an atmospheric haze; their grip of mood surpasses a lot of like-sounding bands, but the songwriting took a surprising number of repeated plays before it really started to sink in. Ad Nauseam are busier than Ulcerate, more atonal than Gorguts, and yet I never fully get a feeling of chaos from what they're doing here. That's not a bad thing for their part in it; it's a matter of intent. Ad Nauseam are the sort of band that have set out to create high art (or, at least as high as death metal can muster) to a recorded medium, and they've not left anything up to chance. It's impossible to pick up on half the nuances on this album until the familiarity sets in. Though I'd reckon the same applies to most substantive tech-death, there's a new level of appreciation that unfolds once you give this album enough time to sink. What comes off as an amorphous flood of avant-garde, technical and dissonant aggressions finally begins to take individual shapes. Melody takes hindseat to virtually every other aspect of music here, but some of the swirling guitar leads and dynamic changes (from tech death to equally atonal clean sections and back again) offer something in the way of signposts.

Whatever grievances come up in listening to Nihil Quam Vacuitas Ordinatum Est probably have to do with conscious decisions the band made in developing their style. I am not necessarily looking for melody, but some fresh ingredients to further separate song from song would have helped to liven up the album more, especially during its second half. The homogeneously claustrophobic atmosphere already makes its mark from the first track, and doesn't really care to evolve to give the 55 minute length some helpful dynamic. Also, outside of its vaguely modern classical slant (manifested in boundlessly effective orchestration segments by guitarist Andrea Petucco) I'd hesitate to say Ad Nauseam's formula has ever cared to reinvent the style we've welcomed since Obscura. But a boldness of style is less important than a wealth of substance, and it's in this respect that Ad Nauseam have truly impressed me. Nihil Quam Vacuitas Ordinatum Est has been laboured over tirelessly, and it's apparent from the meticulous way they've handled everything from the album's structure to the puzzling sequences of notes you'll find buried in any given moment. Genuinely experimental they are not, but this debut has already established them as prospective masters of their craft.

Originally written for Heathen Harvest Periodical.