Nachtmystium - Assassins: Black Meddle, Pt. 1 (2008)

Nachtmystium - Assassins: Black Meddle, Part 1 (2008)

I don't think I've listened to this album since the year it came out, but I do remember being very enthusiastic about it when I first heard it. Specifically, the song Ghosts of Grace which must have been played a bajillion times on my iPod. I couldn't get over how catchy the song was for a supposedly "black metal" band, thanks in part to what I think is the use of a repeated piano key buried deep beneath the chorus of the song. This little trick is also used by producers like Kurt Ballou (of Converge fame) to give heavier and more extreme music choruses a similar sense of energy that's characteristic of pop and rock music. Looking back on Black Meddle, Part 1 now, I still think that it's an ambitious and successful album, but I'm not sure it is as groundbreaking as I first thought it was.

Chicago experimentalists Nachtmystium play with a form of extreme music built off of a black metal foundation, but infused with pop sensibilities and psychedelic rock homages to artists like Pink Floyd. The black metal foundation should be obvious to anyone listening, as lead guitarist and vocalist Blake Judd screams with a traditional black metal rasp, and despite writing some fairly indie rock sounding riffs, the band's heavy leaning on the tritone still gives the whole album that "evil" kind of feel. But where this album gets really interesting is on the experimental side of things. The ways in which Nachtmystium blend genres include long psychedelic rock guitar solos on songs like Code Negative, bouncy piano-laced pop choruses on songs like Ghosts of Grace and even some very smooth saxophones near the end of the album on Seasick, Pt. 2 (Oceanborne). All of this experimentation, and the overall lush production of this album make it much more of a prog or stoner metal album than anything resembling black metal. It's much more Baroness and Kylesa than it is Mayhem or Darkthrone.

My biggest complaint with Black Meddle, Part 1 would be that Blake Judd's vocals can become a bit grating, given that he employs almost the exact same slow, word-per-word, lyrical delivery on every song. It's like he's just enunciating every syllable very carefully, in a pattern that fits with the tempo of the song, and this. can. get. a. bit. mo. not. o. nous (see what I did there?). Otherwise, I think that this album succeeded in doing what it set out to do. That is to simply play, or "meddle" with sounds that are seen to be conventional within various genres and combine them into a record that is something the band members want to hear. Where I think the album doesn't succeed as much is in the Assassin part of the album title, in that Nachtmystium set out to "kill" the notion that the band belongs within a specific genre. They may have successfully alienated themselves from the black metal crowd, but their sound seems to fit right in with the much more experimental "stoner metal" sub genre of extreme music.