Nightbringer
Terra Damnata
(Season of Mist)
Nightbringer play a much different style of black metal than most of their American peers. The style has its roots in an appreciation of nature and the esoteric world around us, so maybe the group’s Colorado home makes more sense as to why they embrace their Nordic and Hellenic influences, with a side of French dressing. One can name drop Emperor, Deathspell Omega, and even Nintendo video games (particularly those involving castles, dungeons, and demons), but Nightbringer’s atmospheric sound is certainly engrossing and all-encompassing. Vocalist and guitarist Naas Alcameth’s diverse vocals help keep songs grounded, despite a wide variety of NES-styled guitar leads and synth passages. Seriously, there are times it feels like Terra Damnata is the offspring of a 90s European black metal record and a video game, except rather than skewing towards the silly end of that thought experiment, these practitioners of the dark arts embrace all of the menace and esoteric beauty that can be wrung out of their instruments.
The record is always furious, but it is never unrelenting, employing well-placed interludes, segues, and build-ups to help contextualize the mayhem when it comes, and it certainly goes hard in the paint, so to speak. Nightbringer can blast beat ‘n’ shriek with the best of them, but it’s the added experimental and almost progressive elements that help season this record into something special. Were it not for a couple weak moments, particularly with “Inheritor of a Dying World” and “The Lamp of Inverse Light”, Terra Damnata could be talked about as a landmark release, especially in the US black metal realm. Some of that is due to its over 50-minute runtime, but Nightbringer’s expertise in embracing the orthodox elements of European black metal with what amount to video game melodies and synth work leads to an excellent album nonetheless.
