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Released on December 1, 2014 via Burning World Records
Dutch black metal experimenters Nihill aren’t ones to rush into things. They spread a planned trilogy of albums over five years (Grond 2007; Krach 2009; Verdonkermaan 2012), and after previously avoiding any live performances whatsoever, they decided to give it a go at no less a venue than 2013’s Roadburn Festival. Even then, they made everyone wait until the last day, pulled a black curtain over the front of the stage, and held out until the room was packed before sweeping back the veils in front of a thick fog of smoke, shrouded figures and some of the most viciously hostile black metal intensity I’ve ever witnessed. So another album so soon after, with a world tour (ok, actually just two dates in early December) means they’ve been busy, and with Verderf, have produced an abrasive but varied tour of black metal’s bleakest remote wildernesses.
Opener ‘Ghoul’ is a three-minute skree of harsh noise, though there are hints that the sonic origin of the fierce all-in-the-red cacophony is a chemically-treated screeching that links back to a dark black metal. Then suddenly the malfunctioning signal receiver is given a sharp smack, and we’re jolted into the track ‘Carrion Eaters’ and treated with the entrance of vocals that feel like the tightening of a cold metal vice. A sense of noise chaos is thrown in half way through, when a skip of junk metal is unceremoniously emptied into the whirling hurricane.
No breathing space whatsoever is permitted between this and the fury of ‘Kolos’, oddly angled riff all unsprung over a basic structure of heavy slow beat and carpet of grime. A spitting mention of Jesus Christ and then the fear and anxiety rise as the guitars twist upwards, before ‘Wielding the Scythe’ continues the frenetic attack. ‘Spirituum’ then extorts a more twisted howling before the clattering splatter of the machinic drum patterns get into a seesawing but pummeling momentum, and then the tempo is raised again as ‘Morbus’ strains at the leash. It’s testament to Nihill’s claw grip on your neck that even the longest track ‘Engorged’ sustains the taut atmosphere throughout ten full minutes of intent whispering of a demonic voice that has failed to notice that the recording studio is on fire and burning down around it. Then finally, ‘Ossuarium’ hits back into the jagged riffs and growl for a final juddering sandpaper blast.
Despite some of their drone or noise pieces on previous albums, and the almost harsh noise wall effect behind ‘Engorged’, this is most definitely a black metal album through and through. But it’s a kind of black metal which has absorbed those more experimental qualities into its orbit in order to alchemically strengthen the intoxicating and furious intensity. In a musical world where ‘black metal’ so often means post-rock with tremolo picking, Verderf summons an intense, malevolent claustrophobia in its noise-rusted mastery of metal extremism.
