[cover artwork by Adam Vick of Dark Meditation]
Everyone you know and love is a shambling whole comprised of smaller and smaller parts. You can drill down through the cutaneous, into the tissue, within the molecular, and arrive at the atomic, each step becoming a little more neat and orderly as you go (for the sake of argument and in lieu of more ill-informed dithering, we will skip the subatomic. Quite frankly, electrons are just too unserious. Inhabiting two separate positions at once? Get a real job, OK? Or go outside, I don’t care). Point being, the elements are the letters to our body’s words to our vitality’s sentences to our humanity’s stories. This is, of course, also true of the flora, fauna, hither and yon of our world, and even of Nite, the unlucky subject of our current affair.
Nite are often tagged as a “blackened heavy metal” band and understandably so. For three albums now they have practiced a morningstar-swinging, armor-denting brand of traditional heavy metal urged forward by a roiling tide of poisonous fogbreath. Blackened like a Creole protein, yes, and heavy as a Creole Pro Team™, oh you bet. But I’d like to offer another angle – Nite are an elemental heavy metal band. NO giggling, let the thesis play out.
Mighty drums, crushing bass, leads that soar and melt your face. Riffs of steel, songs of war, vox to lead a fearsome horde – these are the undergrad-illy arranged base elements of heavy metal. Nite understand this well, to a degree that even their NAME, like a one-armed, undead soldier, is a severed remnant of its original form – you still know it even by silhouette, and as it inexorably marches forward, blade in solitary hand, it is all the more fearsome for it.
What we have here is 37 minutes of no-nonsense bricklaying. In today’s market that could be considered a slight, maybe, but there is a deftness to this approach that must be at minimum addressed and at at midpoint applauded. Every instrument is played with a journeyman’s hand and an inherent knowledge that you can still build a sturdy, and even beautiful, structure with your stock & trade materials. Click the old linkeroo above and see – “Crow (Fear the Night)” is exactly what I’m prattling on about. That intro/chorus riff is a stomper and cleverly open, leaving just enough air in it to place both a ripping pre-chorus lead and a shout-along refrain primed for a sweaty audience roar. Meanwhile, Patrick Crawford rides the beat like he’s on a destrier facing an imminent, headlong charge into the breach. These guys just get it; what makes for maximum impact needs only to be the head of the hammer and the force of the swing.
Cover art shown above irrelevant to content but essential in spirit.
Van Labrakis (vokills, guitar, producer, engineer, mixer & master-er) wears the black to the party. Black metal’s vocals are one of the core signifiers, or ahem one might say elements, of their genre. As distinct as corpse paint at a birthday party, they are, and boy does Van ever distinct up the joint. His is a shadowy croak of ages, within time and without, and he brings a welcome air of mystery to the proceedings. I can imagine Nite with a more traditional heavy metal vocalist and sure, they would rip, but swapping out your typical hero’s bellow for the rasp of what might be a foe (or realistically a chaotic-neutral type) is the roux to the gravy, thickening the sound whilst also deepening the flavor.
The raddest tune of the bunch is “Carry On”. An arpeggiated, syncopated lead unlike any other on the album – a sparkly, searching gem – carries (please forgive me) the weight. This is the earworm of earworms on Cult of the Serpent Sun, one of Arrakian size. The chorus continues the established trend of infectious simplicity in not only delivery but content. The lyrics of “Carry On”, all 20 words of them, reinforce what, children? Yes, the thrust of this spattering – the thesis! Nite excel at using the skeleton of an idea and nothing more. Distilled, evocative concepts illustrated with as little extraneous nonsense as possible.
“You say Life is a game.
I say Time has the answer.”
(certain nouns capitalized by the author of this “work” for dramatic effect in laborious and maybe even patronizing fashion in furtherance of his own potential misreading of the plot)
The air of mystery is a formidable tool. Take these lyrics, bubble them out of the grimacing cauldron that is Van Labrakis’ throat and poof! You’ve got yourself an ominous good time.
I know my basic mammalian needs can be reduced to water, food, shelter, companionship. I also know we, as an entropically stupid species, can over-wordcount the Dickens out of those things with ease – why cup the nectar of life from a nearby babbling brook when we can use 10% of our paycheck on artisanal, de-ionized moonwater from lunar dust pressed through cheesecloth? The heart, soul, hands and minds of any given matter are all that matters.
Listen to Cult of the Serpent Sun if you are interested in any or all of the following: mighty drums, crushing bass, leads that soar and melt your face. Riffs of steel, songs of war, vox to lead a fearsome horde. Sound familiar? Class dismissed.
