“Can you see it? / Believe me that / Our dreams will orbit the Earth forever”. Can you open a lyric before descending into complete madness with a brutal force awakening in front of our eyes? Oh, hell yeah! For Pennsylvania-based death metal band Rivers of Nihil, who have been around since 2009, they have unleashed four studio albums from 2013 to 2021 on Metal Blade Records scorching the sounds of hardship, in your face attitude, and skull-crunching snarling vocals that’ll send shivers down your spine.
For their fifth sole self-titled release, which is a follow-up to their previous album The Work, this is guided with a fresh piece of anger, powder-keg arrangements, and dynamic elements with an intense approach to show how far they come. Despite the line-up changes, and Adam Biggs replacing Jake Diffenbach on lead vocals, followed by Andy Thomas taking over Jon Topore’s rhythm guitar textures, you never know what to expect when you put this bad boy on, start to finish.
While I’m not the biggest Death Metal expert, I have to say their fifth album is like a volcanic explosion, waiting to hit at the right time, at the right place to make your eardrums bleed like a motherfucker! You have the roar, punching bass lines, nods to the new wave sounds of Bauhaus, The Cure’s Pornography-era, and a darker version of Devo’s 1980 gem, Freedom of Choice. Followed by jazzy saxophone sections.
Yes, jazzy saxophones, this ain’t Kenny G, folks. Alarming compositions with the machine-gun double bass-drum patterns, making it sound like firing bullets going off to kill the monsters that are featured in the DOOM franchise between the 2016 reboot, Eternal, and The Dark Ages. And dare I say, dooming post-apocalyptic piano arrangements that is thrown into the middle of their new album?
This is the alternate soundtrack to the franchise that Rivers of Nihil have endured to make the game a bad-ass score, and will make you head bang until the end of time. Given the sections of arpeggiated leads, clean turn cookie-monster vocals, soft melodies, gothic cathedrals witnessing the dark-red clouds approaching our world, witnessing the views of hell right in front of us, this band have up the ante more and more to get your blood pumping.
They push and push you towards the edge of a cliff as they prepare to spread their wings, dropping massive amounts of weapons towards the enemy down below with unbelievable fire power that the band have taken the next chapter in their history books. If you are very new to the band’s music, then this is the starting point for you to get into the adventure that’s waiting for you.
