Nadiwrath : " Circle of Pest"

This French band combines thrash and death metal in a punk infused cauldron of rebellious blackness. The punk influence comes from the often straight forward chord progression that take twists and turns on a compositional level. The bass player has some prog leanings while we are dealing with a crusty blaster on the drum kit. The second song "Dominance of Negative Thoughts' finds them racing away at a raid blast that the vocals sometimes back off of to give a shout rather than the dry mid range rasp that dominates this album. There is only so far ou can go with such fire tremolo attacking your ear drums. A blast of trash tinged black metal roars to life on "Rebuilding your world". These song are very concise there are not sprawling with  the right amount of hook to draw a few people in who are not normally fans of black metal. Mid way the songs slows into a deliberate sway and then rampages off again.

They sound like a faster version of Nachtmystium on " Ashes of an Old Ruined World" which finds a catchier focus placed on the neck snapping riffs they are throwing at you. This trend continues on "No Pity For Your Kind" that also races along with a more punk fueled slant to their thrashing. "Breathless We Stand Upon Apocalypse". The vocals have more snarl to their rasp and have a more passion to their anger. But by this time many of the songs are relying on bulldozing with  their viciousness, reminding me of my interview with Ihsahn where we talked about how death metal only works of one emotion, and black metal has a wider scope of emotion, thus lending it self to less limits. It's not to say the drummer isn't blistering and the way the chords ring out don't have some melodic tendencies, but it's generally a straight forward in your face attack.

"No Praise to an Unknown..." finds it's groove a few snare hits before the midway point. Its starts off with their reliance on speed becoming more apparent even though it's the more galloped riff that really grabs you. I thought the last song was still "No Praise to an Unknown.."  it was not until a noticed how the bas was getting busy amid all the blasting that I looked up and took note, or it could have been the fact I thought this song is getting long. All the monk chanting that comes in during the final few minutes would have been better served if they worked into the actual song more. They do pulls out some interesting sounds to throw into the whirl wind of blasting chaos they thrash out so I'll give this album a 7 despite the fact that it falls prey to some of the one dimensional tendecies that plague many extreme metal bands, this band just happens to be good within the one dimension, the question then becomes how long can I stay in that dimension with out needing more melodic layers?