AZAGHAL — Nemesis (review)

AZAGHAL — Nemesis album cover Album · 2012 · Black Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
3.5/5 ·
Time Signature
In deathlike silence...

Genre: black metal

For a black metal release, this is quite well produced, and the absence of sloppiness (something that, since the days of Hellhammer and Venom has been an integrated feature of raw black metal) is definitely notable.

The music is arch black metal along the lines of Mayhem's legenday "De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas", which means blastbeat-ladden fast and furious black metal. All the genre-defining elements are there: blastbeats galore, tremolo picking, tense harmonies, dissonance, harsh vocals and emphasis on repetition.

So, yes it does sound a lot like it could be a run-of-the-mill Mayhem rip-off release, but it isn't. There is actually quite a lot of variation on this album, when you listen to it in its entirety. Firstly, there are some quite melodic elements every now and then, as in "Vihasta ja Veritöistä" and "Ex Nihilo", while "In Deathlike Silence", true to black metal tradition, has a tremolo picked melody on top of furious blastbeating and also features some darkly melodic passages, and the massively melodic title track even features some clean vocals. Also, a track like "Hail the Whore" contains a clean guitared melancholic instrumental section, and "Ex Nihilo" and the Hellhammer-inspired "Black Legions of Satan" (also figuring in the corpus of Finnish black metal outfit Vultyr which features members of Azaghal kept heavy and crushing), the latter only picking up pace towards the end.

With "Nemesis" Azaghal shows that rawer black metal can be fierce and brutal - and true to the genre - but still contain expressive melodic elements without losing the blackness and evil.
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