The Child Must Die

Nihilistinen Barbaarisuus are back with their second full length entitled “The Child Must Die” and what a release it is! Ethereal and ambient sounding, the band really strike a chord in the genre of, black metal. I mean you really have to have something special with a name like these guys have. This is my first introduction to the band even though they have been around since 2012. Even so, I definitely like what I am hearing from these guys and their talent for this type of metal is quite evident in these 7 tracks. I think that there is something here that will please most fans of black metal and even extreme metal in general.

Upon listening to this disc for the first time, I noticed almost immediately how the band brings different forms of black metal and a few other elements together to create such a unique sound. The guitar work is classic black metal all the way through, but combining it with keyboards adds an almost “orchestral” type vibe in terms of the delivery of these 2 elements. The influences I picked up on here were Immortal and Dissection, with a slight vibe of very early Dimmu Borgir to top things off. As far as the drums go, there is absolutely no doubt that there are times when they are triggered which, considering the material and its construction and delivery, is not a bad thing. Regardless of that the style of the drums has a definite “rawness” to them that I can’t quite put my finger on. It’s not so much in the sound of the drums, but more in the vibe and feeling that you get when you listen to them. Here I noticed a nice Emperor vibe and influence somewhere around the “In the Nightside Eclipse” era with a nice little vibe of newer Abigail Williams added in with it. What I liked most about this release was the vocals. This is probably the rawest part of the whole album, but I tell you it really works here. A lot of bands go for a deep growl or a high screech, but the best was I can describe the vocals here is to ask you to imagine the vocals on Cradle of Filth’s “Total Fucking Darkness” demo and the vocals on Impaled Nazarene’s “Tol Cormpt Norz Norz Norz” and that is pretty much what is going on here. When you take this type of vocal pattern and integrate it with such ambient and ethereal sounding music like you will find on this CD, what you have is a unique piece of fantastic awesomeness that can hold its own with any band who is playing a similar type of metal today.

Being the strong release that this album is, I see this band creating more masterful pieces of black metal music for years to come. I do want to backtrack a bit and mention that the production on this CD is absolutely phenomenal. You know the band takes their work seriously when they have a production level like that on this album. I highly recommend that anyone into the bands mentioned above to rush out to get this CD. In fact get anything that this band has to offer. I know I’m going to.