Nokturnal Mortum

NeChrist (The End)
by Scott Hefflon

I like Nokturnal Mortum, mostly because, while I don’t understand them or agree with a lot of their decisions, I trust them and I’ll just go along with it. While NeChrist (means AntiChist) has some weird chanting and Eastern folky celebration stuff that then segues into old school black metal (and plenty else I can’t even describe as it flashes past, like speeding down the highway to hell with the top down, the hot wind singeing your hair and making your skin blister), I’ll trust the hateful vibe because, ya know, they’re from the Ukraine and have a proud heritage and I live in the suburbs just outside of Boston and have a kitchen drawer stuffed with take-out menus.

NeChrist is long, angry, sounds like shit, and is packaged with simple photocopies, fonts ya can’t read, and low-contrast photos of long-haired guys in corpsepaint. So yeah, it’s ugly black metal screamed in Russian with Ukrainian folk stuff worked in about as subtly as the spear in Christ’s side. It’s like watching a movie flashing between a sunshine celebration in a quaint village with straw roofs and fair-skinned virgins leaping and skipping and a bonfire ritual/sacrifice that makes that scene in Angelheart look like Disney: Carnage, fire, flashing blades, screams of terror and torment, ya know, the kinda trip that Visa commercials never warn ya about. Trying to describe or judge this CD is like trying to understanding someone else’s nightmare.
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