‘Brutal’ is a word that loses its weight too often nowadays, but Anaal Nathrakh show its true meaning, and the fact they do gives us basis to mention their name on places like Extreme Responses... the other reason being of course that Dave Hunt growls better than you! The English duo's ability to change without losing momentum is truly inspiring, but the key to their success remains in the paradoxical accessibility of records such as ‘Hell is Empty, and All the Devils Are Here’ – one of the rare cases when a band achieves popularity with no sign of compromise. 'Passion' illustrates the evolution in their sound and serves as an audio map of (almost) everything extreme in the world.
Twisted, evil and, of course, brutal, ‘Passion’ is the logical continuation of ‘In The Constellation Of The Black Widow’, with a few improvements such as the impressive depth of the sound and the unorthodox structures of the songs (‘Drug-Fucking Abomination’ is a good example). The blackened riffs, Emperor-like epics, tortured bass lines and grinding blastbeat after d-beat drum schemes turn the album into a pure exploration of misanthropy. 'Tod Huetet Uebel’ sees Hunt doing his best behind that mic; the Benediction frontman throws painful, hysteric, psychotic screams of bitter poison at your face and at the end, ‘Portrait of the Artist’, leaves an open gate for the next release, promising that it will be even darker, faster and heavier than this one!
Rainer Landfermann is fabulous on this!
ReplyDeleteHe really is, it's an awesome disc!
ReplyDelete