Nightbringer : "Terra Damnata"

The Colorado black metal horde has returned with their 5th album and continue to slay by summoning some of the most legit black metal to come out of the States. The snarl takes you back to the golden years of the 90's for some classic hateful screaming. There is a cool angular section in the latter half of "Misrule". These guys have all the grandiose venom, but taper it with some eerie and unhinged moments. "Midnight's Crow " reminds me a little of older Dimmu Borgir. The production on the album is the shit it sounds pretty massive.The effect on the vocals on "Of key and crossed bones" further pushes it in the Dimmu direction. Which I am fine with as it's not really ripping them off but using a blueprint they perfected and working off of that.

A piano starts of "Let the Silence be..." before throwing them into a rapid fire blast beat. The drums sound like a wall that is rolling over you. They have a very dramatic and orchestrated sound without being symphonic. The songs is just well layered and arranged though it doesn't snake through the same dark maazes as Dimmu. /The use of synths is a card well played on this album as they push the dynamic intensity forward with adding an element of cheese. They do not rely on them as much as Dimmu and fall on the side of earlier Emperor when it comes to this. The vocals on "Inheritor of a Dying World" remind me a little of the more dramatic exclamations of Watain. This song slows things down a little and allows the double bass to speed up around it rather than trying to keep up.

The dark dissonance to "the Lamp of Inverse Light" sets a pretty powerful tone. They layer samples over the extended chords as the song creeps to life. While it sounds cool enough I am not sure it deserves to stand along as an instrumental.  They end things on a more brisk note  It is a more typical take on black metal but these guys do it so well that it doesn't bore me like a thousand other bands who might attempt this with a more rough hewn production value and less precise playing.  I'll give this album an 8.5, it's really good, I don't have any complaints about it some of the songs just grab me more than others and the ones that run off pure aggression don't speak to me as strongly , other than that this is a must for fans of black metal. This is being released April 14th on Season of Mist.