NIHILL
Sunday's Afterburner was fantastic. The Green Room saw the exhibition of the band of the day as far as I was concerned: NIHILL. The Dutch are co-responsible for spreading the most lethal
of recent black metal plagues, together with other malignant entities such as
Dodechaedron, Aosoth, Svartidauði, not to mention veteran deviant Dutch
experimentalist Gnaw Their Tongues, and would definitely enflame the guts of
early Deathspell Omega and Blut aus Nord fans. The band set up mysteriously
hidden behind closed thick curtains, while the room began to fill up. Once
again, this was to be their stage debut. When the curtains withdrew, a
dark, and foggy stage was revealed, dimly lit by the black & white projection of an
intricate and unsettling-looking forest. The drummer took his place, then the
waif-like figure of the bass player walked on stage, his white face framed by
jet black hair. Quite a sight… Hooded guitarists and a threatening-looking
singer joined them, as a dense cloud of malevolent, suffocating noise-drone
filled the air. Do not ask me how it all began, but suddenly I was in the midst
of an exhilarating storm of ice! The starkly cold violence, the foreboding
noise/ambience, the bleak and unforgiving absence of hooks or light fissures
should have provoked an asphyxiating sensation, but Nihill provided nothing but
pure delight by indulging us in a majestic display of fierce BM blasted almost
all the way through. Few and far between were the slow paced, ominous tracks
that characterized most of their 2007 monster “Krach”, while it was the über
cold/fast stuff off the magnificent (sold-out) “Verdonkermaan” that sandblasted
a stage sinisterly plunged in complete darkness; only a few plasma-white lights
pierced the dense fog, illuminating the dark silhouettes of the musicians from
behind. More than once I found myself covered in goose-bumps, aware of
assisting to a top quality black metal show from the Dutch, who ended up
featuring at the very top of my favorite Roadburn acts this year.
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