Genre : "Blackness Music", Black Metal
Label : Metal Throne Productions
Origin : Iran
Rating : 8.5 / 10
Nazhand is a black metal act from Iran, and its Complicated Antitheses demo is as discomfortingly authentic as a local riot footage made by a cell phone - to say the least. It sure seems to be an interesting question to pose what kind of extreme music is given birth to by souls and nervous systems shaped and formed by the Iranian consensus reality, and let me tell you that the results are pretty disturbing AND culturally/sonically relevant. As far as I ""know"", - (from the media) - many natives of Iran feel a constant-, suppressed urge to leave their homeland, wanting to flee from the pseudo-democratic oppression propagated by the local government. Legislated atrocities are commonplace, administered by the power as parking tickets.
Nazhand's music renders this rampant experience of instinctive disillusionment, anger and hopelessness with a degree of authenticity that needs and tolerates no criticism. How can be disillusionment "authentic", when you have no actual experience of the things you are lacking? You don't need to have free will to know that it is your birthright to have it. The experience of lacking freedom and free will, is the operational field of the unacceptable disillusionment, because the heart and the mind have a collective, autonomous right and natural desire to possess freedom and free will, and both instinctively know when these birthrights are radically interfered with. As such, being a rebel when your freedom and free will is interfered with, is not only your option, but your duty. Guys, let's talk about the music.
The music on this demo is sick. I have no clue why it is labeled as a demo, because it seems to weigh in as a legit full length to me, with 46 minutes of seriously fucked up sonic content, and that, of course, is a positivity. The album sounds evil and hollow, as it would seek to - in my opinion, with great success - represent all the feelings its creators have to bear and endure as result of their immediate habitual, emotional and ideological surroundings. In this regard, the music herein is a method to get rid of the slitherer spirit tar, and THIS particular rendition of it, I dare say, is one you will not easily forget. Imagine Burzum with a cybernetic tint, - Major Maxim, anyone? - subtract all beauty whatsoever, and you are third-way there.
Major Maxim thinks nothing of you.
The record primarily is a mid-tempo build with the occasional tendency to bring the pace to a restrained-but-still-steady cybernetic crawl, feeling no urge whatsoever to violate the stone-traditional rules of ancient black metal. In other words : if the band finds two strong harmonies, then they - fortunately - won't relent playing them for you until those harmonies reveal their true meaning of malevolent menace, ready and able to start to chew on your soul, which, of course, is the central idea of this Iranian spin.
I especially am content - as a proper pervert - with the vocals on the delivery : the opening track starts out with a calmly paced synth intro of relative mood-disturbance power, but, when the heavily distorted, under-a-cosmos-of-suffering grade vocals are coming in, the tone of the stimuli changes radically, and not for the pleasant. Listen the opening track from 2:09 : oh my God, this is some sick fucking vocals in a truly sick place in the fabric of the mix. The sonic data, in my opinion, is exceptionally dark, discomforting, evil and smartly paced throughout the record, as result of the combination of the cybernetic Burzum rhetorics and the most seriously warped/distorted/tormented vocals I have heard so far.
Nazhand is into what I used to refer as "specter" or "lich" black metal, as the sonic weight of the album is more of a broken spectral character than that of good old fashioned groove metal meat-mass. It's relevantly broken, beautiful ugly music that wants to know if its creator is willing yet to reinvent herself/himself when the music is over, or not. The release comes to its conclusion with an instrumental epic, and I personally am not happy with the fade-out it chooses to end up with, via arriving to a simplistic piano arpeggio. Other than that, the release does not give the sear promise of a shit if I am content or not with it, and that is what it makes it an immediate recommendation. Nazhand's Complicazed Antitheses takes you to places you are grateful you do not have to stick around at, and also places you need to check out if you are serious about your extreme music.
Rating : 8.5 / 10
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