Noxkult

This reviews originally appeared on Deaf Sparrow's Facebook page on 11 June 2016. Written by Stanley Stepanic.

This one took awhile to review, not because I'm lazy, but because I wasn't entirely sure how to explain my thoughts. Nihil Kaos are a seasoned, corrupted black metal band from Istanbul, Turkey, who've been under the deepest underground since 2003. The country has only a little over 400 metal bands, and about 1/4 of those are black metal, so seriously, start with these guys and see what else you can find because there's more to be found there.

"Noxkult" immediately got my attention because of the cover art. I like beasts, stringy creatures, skulls and things with teeth that, upon a mere glance, make you want to bite into something. Meat, dirt because of pica, your own arm, I don't know, but this particular cover somehow checks off all the boxes on my "album cover creature" list, though I'm not particularly sure what's even on it.

Musically what's great about "Noxkult" is that it's a total onslaught. The veins on these guys strain to the point of bursting. You can feel the tension in their muscles, pressure building like some sort of volcanic fissure. Then the drummer's arms rip into pieces as the guitars go from white noise shredding to solos that sound like fingers worn down to the bone. And it never ends, like never. If any complaint could be had it's this, it can tire you out after a few songs. You almost have to take a breather in the middle because it's so damn aggressive. Nihil Kaos would do good to develop more of a theme or inter-connectivity to their music; by the end it's unclear if each song was any different. It's so aggressive it's too aggressive, and almost loses focus. Further, the vocalist runs out of air by the end, as though the entire thing were recorded on a single breath. But these problems are rather minor, so give them some likes because it really is quite a stomach-punching listen, if not occasionally overwhelming.

I'm surprised to learn that this band is from Turkey (Istanbul, to be more precise) - not because I don't expect metal bands to exist in Turkey, but because the music presented on this full-length sounds so Nordic (with a slice of French).

Opening track "Spawn of Devastating Chaos" is a solid opener and sets the tone for the rest of the album, presenting a sound not anywhere near 'devastating chaos', but still a bit on the chaotic side; it feels a little bit compressed, as if the band recorded it in a very small studio and the sound took on that characteristic; drums, guitars, and bass are all very "close" in the mix, with the vocals slightly higher in the middle of this well of tainted waters. This tight soundscape gives Noxkult its chaotic vibe, but if you listen you'll hear that the songs are generally structured in predictable manner, and doesn't go fully avant-garde like many French black metal bands do. This initial chaotic landscape, then, is what made me believe I was listening to a French band at first, one inspired by the Norwegian scene. It turns out, however, that the rest of the album is more orderly and melodic.

Delving deeper into the album, it becomes clearer that this isn't quite black metal either, despite many of that genre's trappings. A song like "Long Night of Destruction" shows a band leaning towards death metal as much as black metal, perhaps more. There are some dissonant riffs here and there, tremolo-picking, and blastbeats that all give off the black vibe, but at the same time the vocals veer into growl-territory at times, and the guitar melodies often sound like they could belong to a death metal band. Many of the riffs have a heaviness to them that also feel more at home in death metal land, but they're juxtaposed with many crispier black metal riffs. I guess it's more deadened black than blackened death overall.

There's a lot of fast drumming on the album, while the stringwork often relies on slower playing, leading to some disconnect between riffs and drumwork (to my ears, anyway). The album definitely has a cold feel to it at times, veering into Dissection-territory in songs like "Fall of the Endless Cycle", and there's definitely a huge infuence from Norwegian black metal on Nihil Kaos, but I still find myself thinking of bands like Deathspell Omega, despite the similarities not being that evident.

This is mainly due to the vocal delivery, both soundwise and the rhythmic performance of the vocals. The vocals are varied, with deep growls, infernal shrieks and everything in between (but always extreme). In the aforementioned "Fall of the Endless Cycle", as well as the opening of the following track "Conditor Malorum" (where Deathspell Omega's influence is somewhat more clear, the guitar work on this track evokes the insanity of DSO), the vocalist does an Attila, for a few moments reminding me of later-era Mayhem. The Mayhem-influences are also quite obvious in "Death Bringing Flames", both the vocal presentation, the riffs, and the slightly apocalyptic approach of the music. I have heard a lot of bands that remind me of other bands, but I've seldom heard Mayhemic influence as distinct as here in this track.

I guess I've summed up what this album's about - throw Norwegian black metal, sprinkle it with some magic Dissection and Deathspell Omega dust, and you're close to getting an elixir of kaos. It's fast, it's raw, it's heavy, it's metal. The band rarely comes up with material as memorable as those two bands, though, though it sounds like a band full of fury and conviction, just not having found their own sound quite yet. It's a decent listen, but probably an album I won't listen to again and again. Solid, but not spectacular. A third band that could be compared to the music on Noxkult is early Belphegor. There are also some nods to thrash metal, with album closer "Katharsis in Ashes" including a straight-out thrash sequence (which incidentally I like a lot, thrash nut that I am). It's also probably the strongest track on offer, and the one that stands out the most; perhaps that is why they chose to put it at the end.