Anaal Nathrakh-Desideratum

ANAAL NATHRAKH is a British/American two-piece band that is pretty popular with the extreme metal crowd. They've been making music for about fifteen years now and are always testing boundaries pushing towards their goal of being the soundtrack to the apocalypse. They have already brought the sounds of evil, hate and violence to seven albums, more than a couple of festivals and the Peel sessions on BBC. Their next album is called "Desideratum" and will be released by MetalBlade this fall.
This album starts with everything you expect from someone whose goal is to induce horror, a layer of shreiks, growls and atmosphere. As you get into the second track "Unleash" there's the start of clean vocals but not the normal kind. It's the haunting kind that add to the layer of terror. Relentless drumming add into the slight synth/sampling effect to complete it. By track four "The one thing needful" they've mixed it all perfectly, clean/harsh vocals with synth/sampling and great guitars. It has an epic yet brutal feel, touching mountain tops while still dragging corpses through the valleys. It stays this way through several songs mixing exactly what I like from black metal and industrial with a little of the classic metal. #7"Idol" is one of those tracks that most would call brutal that I think is catchy and and radio-friendly, makes you want to sing a-long to it. And then next song is shreiking mixed with jackhammer drumming, also included is an wicked riff that comes in and out throughout. "Rage and Red" is comparatively slower than the rest with a little more industrial feel, a little more spoken lyrics and etheral flow. The last song ends it with fast, reckless anger and violent cacaphony, just the way I like my extreme metal.
This album gave me what I was looking for. It was as awesome as a night terror, perfectly layering soundscapes of industrial and black metal. Having it all lurking and readu to lash out with nightmare inducing noise. If you have heard this band before you know what you're getting into, they work really hard to create the sound of armegeddon. as they promise one day humanity will be destroyed and this is the music that will be there to chronicle and soundtrack its downfall.

Michael F. Carnage


 http://www.anaal-nathrakh.com