Nadiwrath – Nihilistic Stench (2010)

Featuring Wrath and the other session members of Dodsferd, today we have Nadiwrath and their debut full-length “Nihilistic Stench” release. In this release we are treated to some Punk infused Black Metal and judging from some of the song names, things are not taken completely seriously when it comes to the ideas behind the lyrics.

Before listening to the album we expected something along the lines of Dodsferd’s depressive Black Metal, but we got surprised by the crushing and straight forward approach that Nadiwrath takes. That being said, the band is very ‘vanilla’ in their musical approach and might only impress a few people that haven’t been listening to Black Metal for a long time.

“Darkness has lost its Meaning” opens things up with a very Punk-ish sound, not even the guitar distortion sounds like something we would expect from a Black Metal release until the second song. This second song we mention has probably one of the most un-inspired (read: stupid) song names ever with “Two Face Shit Fuckers”, but at least features some nice riffing and a solid bass guitar line, as for the lyrics, we don’t even bother mentioning what they talk about.

With “Horns” the band moves into Black and Roll territory and we kind of dig it, if it wasn’t for the stupid lyrics. Maybe most Black Metal hides stupid lyrics behind hellish screams, but Wrath’s singing is decipherable and the lyrics are very annoying. Until the fourth song “There is no Light”, we finally find some Dodsferd resemblance with a mid-paced agonizing section near the end of this song. If the whole album was like this, this review would be going a completely different direction.

After another eloquently titled song (“Another Pimping Whore”), the album switches back and forth between Black and Roll and more traditional Black Metal, and it isn’t until the last track “Memories are Dead” that we finally get another decent song. While the music is not ‘terrible’ in this release, it’s very un-original and gets dull very fast. The riffing is good but needs a bit more variation, the bass guitar is particularly strong in this release and the drumming is just normal. If we had more songs like “Memories are Dead” and “There is No Light” this album would have been very good, but instead we are left with a half-assed attempt and making good Black Metal.

In general we think that fans of Dodsferd will be mostly disappointed by this release, and fans of Black Metal in general will just yawn after a few songs. The musical quality is there and they show they can make good songs (only two), but they need to focus and stop being so damn repetitive and uninspired.

Release: January 15th, 2011

Country: Greece