AZAGHAL: "Nemesis"

For reasons unknown to many, Azaghal has somehow never garnered the attention of the black metal underground in spite of their relentless, primitive attacking they’ve been executing since the 1998 demos. For sure, the band has been in visible throughout their career, appearing on various festivals around the globe, but how many actual Azaghal fans can you count? People that would include the band’s titles on their lists of most influential records? From this, I would make a generalization that this Finnish group has always been a steady, reliable churner of the black arts, unleashing an album after an album without any breaks in around fifteen years, but they’ve still to come up with an album that would truly blast the underground in awe.

Luciferin Valo, Omega and Teraphim from recent years were great additions to the band’s ever-growing discography, diverting from the rather clinical studio productions of earlier material, giving more room for natural sounding, primordial fucking black metal. In the light of the positive impression evoked by these certain album, expectations for Nemesis were somewhat high, but now that I’ve given this newest album a fair amount of listens, I’m sorry to say that this seems to be a step backwards in quality. While it was the crude production that made the previous three albums really shine, Nemesis welcomes back quite a faceless studio sound of faintly knocking drums (where the kick drum even sounds triggered, which might not be the case but it doesn’t matter: it sounds disconnected from the kit nonetheless) and overprocessed guitar sounds. In a nutshell, the sound here is quite modern and thus, for yours truly, uninviting. At this point someone could say that I shouldn’t concentrate too much on production, but a watered down soundscape is always a minus in my books and hinders from digesting the actual compositions. Also, the fact almost hurts that this album would have sounded better had it been recorded on a mere four tracker instead of pricy, professional settings.

The actual songs, however, aren’t below Azaghal’s standards of late years. While ”De Masticatione Mortuorum” and ”Pohjoisen Valkoinen Kuolema” start off in a very traditional spirit of evil riffage in high tempo, the follow-up ”Vihasta ja Veritöistä” is a lengthy piece of latent melancholy and a tad slower pace, one of the highlights of the album. ”Hail the Whore” includes a sweet, semi-acoustic breakdown in its middle, then rising to a bright blast beat climax. ”Ex Nihilo” is another favourite of mine, crawling in a rather slow, brooding atmosphere throughout. ”In Deathlike Silence” and ”Black Legions of Satan” are a bit too common Azaghal pieces that pale in the shadow of the few previous tracks, but the eponymous ”Nemesis” compensates a bit with its nice main riff and a cleanly sung chorus. ”The Pit of Shoggoths” and ”Satanic Devotion” leave me somewhat unsatisfied as well, but admittedly the momentarily unhinged vocals on the latter work very well.

So, while there’s nothing majorly wrong about any of the tracks here, it is ultimately the production that is the glitch for me here, and which lowers the album’s score from good points. But, by now, enough has been complained and you’re aware of what you’re getting into if you’re to explore Nemesis. If I were new to the band, I’d start with some of the previous albums mentioned two paragraphs above. Had I not heard those albums before this one, I guess my overall impression would have been better as the standards wouldn’t have been set that high yet, but what can you do. Perhaps next time, then - I’m sure there’s still a lot of energy left in the lineup to crank up new material and, as we know, Narqath isn’t the scantiest composer, releasing a lot of material under different band monikers.

2.5 / 5