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NACHTMYSTIUM “Blight Privilege”
NACHTMYSTIUM “Blight Privilege”
By Dr. Abner Mality
Somehow NACHTMYSTIUM keeps clawing its way out of the grave. When you talk about NACHTMYSTIUM, you are really talking about Blake Judd. This guy has been through the mill and then some...often due to his own weaknesses. I talked to Judd many, many years ago for Wormwood and lots of dirty water has flowed under the bridge since then. Yet one thing doesn’t seem to change: NACHTMYSTIUM is still capable of top flight black metal.
“Blight Privilege”, the newest attempt by Judd to escape the abyss, ranks very high amongst his creations. Perhaps the highest. It is quintessential black metal with ferocity, melody, darkness...the works. The songwriting straddles that great gulf between accessibility and fidelity to the underground. The songs are well constructed and played. Those who like the lowest depths of the black metal underground may find it overproduced but I don’t think even they can question the quality of the songs.
The opener “Survivors Remorse” has got to be as brutally honest as anything Judd has penned. That includes the chronicles of his drug addiction done on the “Black Meddle: Assassins” records. It is also very classic black metal, flowing smoothly yet harshly with rapid fire riffs that manage to sound ineffably sad. This is the real deal. “Predator Phoenix” is bouncier, slightly more commercial, but easy to get into. “A Slow Decay” eases on the speed, but is soaked in gloom and sad defeat. You can feel the despair in this one.
From their, we get rippingly fast BM with “Conquistador” and “Blind Spot”. Throughout the course of the album, there is no overt attempt to be “avant garde” or step outside the black metal box. With a lot of bands, this would result in monotony, but not here. The last two cuts are the lengthiest and most ambitious, “The Arduous March” and the title track. The latter has some very “heavy metal” sounding lead guitar while the former is wonderfully dark and majestic. It’s hard to find fault with any of the tracks.
Blake is probably one of the more self-destructive personalities in the metal field, yet he’s one of those who can channel those tendencies into real art. That in itself is a gift...as long as he doesn’t misuse it, he has something to live for.
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