NADIWRATH

Wrath of prolific Greek war machine DODSFERD is involved, so you already know that the chances of NADIWRATH's "Nihilistic Stench" sucking are slim. And suck it does not. Also featuring STELLAR DARKNESS guitarist Nadir and former DODSFERD session drummer Maelstrom, the trio infects "Nihilistic Stench" with a mix of scorching black metal and necro punk (sometimes overt, sometimes attitudinal). Aside from the fact that a handful of tracks could have stood a trimming of the BM bangs, the album succeeds for its hair raising approach and adrenaline spikes.

It is on opener "Darkness Has Lost Its Meaning" where one first hears that razor riffed nihilism crossbreeding with black metal, a sound the reoccurs to varying degrees along the way. Black, punk, or otherwise, middle-finger defiance is everywhere; the apt titling of "Two Face Shit Fuckers" a case in point. Rarely one for understatement Wrath's screams and howls of bloody murder keep anyone in listening distance on edge and are anything but statements of faith in the inherent goodness of man.

"Horns" is the first of several tracks where one hears the wheels of creativity turning, if only by way of variations on a blackened theme. With this particular track the shift to doomy churn supported by atmospheric keyboard accent constitutes only a medium shift in mood, as the screams of "fuck you all" tend to keep the listener anchored in Wrath's reality. Things get interesting on "There Is No Light" during which the guitar melody that accompanies the buzz-sawing riff is folk based and offers an intriguing contrast. Those rounded ends again replace jagged edges later on in the nearly eight-minute track, this time inclusive of the bass lines. But it is the 10-minute "Memories Are Dead", which closes the album, that is most traditional from a black metal point of view, the suicidal variety anyway. The clean vocal parts, the airiness, and the pacing, not to mention some tried and appealingly true BM guitar harmonies set it well apart from the other cuts.

One hates to be too picky when the vibe is so right, as it often is here, but the one characteristic of "Nihilistic Stench" that cools off the fires of momentum from time to time are some of the track lengths. When you're pushing the running time past the six- and seven-minute marks the punk aesthetic, which seems to have been an important consideration in writing the album, tends to get overshadowed and a dead horse gets beaten a little too severely. However, the overall vibe keeps that from being too much of a damning concern. The rightness of "Nihilistic Stench" is without argument and that's really what counts; well, that and the radiation sickness that arrives about the same time as the face lacerations.