(review feita por mim a este fabuloso álbum, quem não ouviu, não sei ainda do que está à espera)
Nivathe isn’t a particularly well known band in these days, but for those who’ve heard about Senthil, this name should probably ring some bells. Senthil are an infamous band, famous for its sickly disgusting blackened doom opuses whose lack of variation is compensated by an absolutely dismal and nearly perfect atmosphere, transporting the listener to a realm where words like “torture”, “fear”, “pain” and “death” all make much more sense than in any other common life. Senthil are now comprised of two persons, Plague and Vomit (apparently the guitarist Wretch died under obscure circumstances), but on Nivathe the only composer is Plague, who carves in this solo project another interpretation of the darkest corners of the human psyche. While Senthil’s soundscapes focused heavily on one of the most extreme variants of doom metal, known as funeral doom, but with some black metal tinges, Nivathe present us a massive slab of the dirtiest and harshest black metal this time with some doom bits. If you heard the strictly limited to 50 copies previous self-titled demo, this debut shouldn’t bear a huge surprise for you (the two songs on that demo are present on this debut but with superior quality), however if this is your first contact with this Nivathe/Senthil style, it’s unlikely that you’ll ever forget the moment you first hear it.
This modern piece of sheer brilliance carries an incredibly strong and thick atmosphere much like Senthil, nevertheless “Enveloped in a Diseased Abyss” shows Plague’s maximum attention to detail, something that prevents this debut to fall in the same repetition and continuous riffing repeated ad eternum that happens on Senthil’s outputs. “Enveloped in a Diseased Abyss” has four tracks of eerie madness that shouldn’t sound all too dislocated from a movie using H.P. Lovecraft’s themes and although the songs all reach the 10 minute mark (except for the haunting instrumental “Decay”), like I said, they never get annoying or boring, since there is so much variation and dynamic all over the sound, whether you’re talking about the rhythms, the patterns or the riffing. Honestly, Plague’s commitment to this project is incredible and the fact that he managed to stay away from Senthil’s sounding is noteworthy, not to mention audacious, given the large cult that follows the work from that band, after all doing something nearly similar would seem the most probable choice, but luckily that is not the case in here.
“Enveloped in a Diseased Abyss” opens with “Writhing, Collapsed Flesh”, a magnificent 18 minute opus that starts tormenting the listener with frightening and urging, tremulous noise, dragging for more than 1 minute. When the real instruments break open, the atmosphere shatters with discordant guitar melodies and slow paced drum beats, while power chords get strummed with seemingly endless scorn and Plague starts disserting about his hateful condition as a mere mortal entity who wishes for death to come and infect his foul body. As the music evolves and successively crumbles once, twice and thrice, it eventually falls in this black hole devoid of emotion at about the middle of the song, where all instruments gather and vomit the sickest moment of the song, where black metal is pushed to its limit almost stepping into the noise chapter. This moment is particularly dramatic, as Plague screams like his life is depending on it, screeching with severe intensity “Rip me from this womb, And let me know only the fear, and awe of you, Pierce my side and let my blood spill out, Destroy me, Destroy my life for I only know death” and it seems like the last forces are spent on this cry for the approaching and unavoidable end. After that, the song continues all the way to the end, interspersed with bleaker guitar melodies and low chords, always at the speed of a snail.
Next track is “Veins of Death and Hunger”, which is definitely the best track of the bunch even though it isn’t that great surprise, given the fact that it has already been heard on the self-titled demo. It blasts right open with this enormous riff that is capable of breaching the ground and darken the skies and what it’s most remarkable it’s the impressive rush to change the rhythm evolving altogether with Plague’s this time around, completely insane vocals. The song continues to show the astounding composition skills from Plague, shifting between moments of pure madness and semi-lucid savagery but it’s at the minute 4 where he decides to blow all the listener’s expectations introducing this section with continuous guitar feedback on the background, while acoustic guitars play some trance inducing notes. This is the moment where the song mood shifts 180 degrees and it’s the definite moment of the crowning of Plague as an otherworldly composer, a throne where I used to place Wintherr from Paysage d’Hiver, Wrest from Leviathan, Malefic from Xasthur and more recently, Arioch a.k.a. Mortuus from Funeral Mist. Actually, this break could be easily compared with Paysage d’Hiver’s “Welt Aus Eis” acoustic interlude in the middle of the song, where the blizzard seems to stop and for a few couple of moments, the sky opens and shows a landscape of total and complete destruction. On “Veins of Death and Hunger” the acoustic interlude serves another purpose that I still haven’t found a description for, but that has an equally thundering effect on the listener as that on “Welt Aus Eis”.
Now comes the disturbing third track, called “Decay” also present on the demo “Nivathe”, now with its atmosphere now captured with better quality. Electric guitar feedback supports more acoustic playing, creating an evocative ambience that actually works really well between “Veins of Death and Hunger” and the final track that gives name to the album, “Enveloped in a Diseased Abyss”. While presenting little more than what I described, the song is an overly compelling track that really fits the mood of the listener after the punishment and torture received on the two tracks before.
Like I said, “Enveloped in a Diseased Abyss” closes the album and showcases once again Plague’s composition skills on writing dissonant riffs that would make Deathspell Omega stand straight. The guitars screech high notes while more power chords mark rhythm and middle-range notes are played on the background discretely, the atmosphere is sterile, diseased, a bloody mess where insanity walks freely ready to hit without warning and ultimately bringing death with it. This track is fairly complex has a lot of details that are worthy to find out, turning it into a nice closing track, with a claustrophobic sense that I haven’t felt since Sunn O)))’s “Báthory Erzsébet”, but it also has an almost industrial feel, like there was some sort of machinery process working, imperturbable and absolutely emotionless, just a cold, lifeless procedure.
Plague has therefore created a hideous and amorphous record that shouldn’t have come out of the void it from where it belongs, but luckily it has and we are lucky to have the possibility to witness this work that encapsulates the most obscure music you’ll ever hear. The album was released in partnership by two of the best Portuguese labels/distros available, Bubonic Productions (Worship, Inverno Eterno, Bosque, Inanition, InThyFlesh, etc.) and Universal Tongue (Alkerdeel, The Austrasian Goat, Alastor, etc.). The album’s artwork is fantastic, containing some photos from Plague in some sort of ritual and some delightful although strange paintings that I believe were also made by him. What impressed me also was the intriguing artwork from the slipcase, which contained this drawing of three girls, one of them is floating in a river in a pose that instantly reminds me of Millais’ “Ophelia”, a renowned painting from that English artist, from around 1852. The other two girls are placed perpendicularly and I’d say they are almost identical versions of Klimt’s fish women, from “Bewegtes Wasser” and “Fishblut”, both paintings from 1898. Actually, the three women have a lot in common with Klimt’s depiction of women, which always looked like they were in some sort of trance, they were exciting, beautiful and yet dangerous, mysterious, which formed this type of two-edged knife with human shape. I still haven’t figured out the relation of the drawing with the record, but nevertheless it’s interesting to relate two distinct forms of art in one work.
If you’re looking for an intense and savage hybrid form of black/doom, Nivathe is an excellent suggestion. Escaping from the easy formula built with Senthil, Plague crafted in Nivathe an unique style of black metal that is sure to bring you a lot of nightmares. Not only the music is great, but metaphorical and cryptic lyrics dealing with the end of the world, the death and obliteration of the physical human body and very interesting. You probably won’t find any more copies of the self-titled demo, so be sure to grab this record while it is available, for it is sure one of the best damn things you’ll hear from the past year.
