Nihility – Beyond Human Concepts
Release Date: 8th January 2022
Label: Vicious Instinct Records
Bandcamp
Genre: Blackened Death Metal.
FFO: Hideous Divinity, Behemoth, God Dethroned.
Review By: Rick Farley
Portugal’s own Nihility, a Blackened Death Metal band about to unleash their sophomore album Beyond Human Concepts hopefully to lots of eager awaiting fans. At first listen, I will admit that I thought it was just your average run-of-the-mill Death Metal album that’s been released on the constant by any number of random bands. I’ve never been afraid to admit when I was wrong, and I was wrong here. It took multiple listens before layers started to reveal themselves, the little segments of extra styles and ideas that you don’t normally hear frequently within this genre started standing out as memorable bits of music. The songwriting begins to sound mature and polished; you’ll notice the transitions between parts of the songs are silky smooth, coming across as individual and distinguishable. Basically, it becomes an album that rewards you the more you listen to it. That’s not to say that Beyond Human Concepts is perfect because it’s not, but it does please the part of my brain that wants something familiar while still sounding crisp and modern. Nihilty serves up an enjoyable slab of fresh sounding savagery.
For the most part, Beyond Human Concepts is a mid-paced album. It never really feigns far from that formula, which in this case is fine because it’s chock-full of extra little goodies that bring a uniqueness to the songs but are still serving the overall composition. Short bass interludes in the middle of songs, slow chorded melodies and harmonics, the occasional Tech Death style riff, chunks of Old School Death Metal, some airy open string melodies, a layered solo melody in the vein of Death, odd and unique chords, thrashy riffs and beats that transcend them further than just being a simple Blackened Death Metal band. Truly a lot of ideas are being realized within these songs and are being done well. At Nihility’s core, though, they’re pure Death Metal with heavy Black Metal influences. Every song wants to brutalize you and then drag your body into a dark, snowy forest.
The riffs here are intense, heavy and consistently good. They interlace between styles flawlessly. Going from straight chest pounding complex Death Metal to tremolo picked Black Metal with great care. They careen back and forth with a nasty, hellish fury. The solos should also be mentioned, while they are not overly virtuosic, they are well-thought-out and executed. The bass is audible and thick sounding, following right along with the guitars and occasionally rearing its pummelling low end for some very tasteful interludes and solos. The drums are relentless from thrashy beats to powerful blasting, crazy fills with several starts and stops that enhance the already good songwriting. Mixed well, you can hear the intricacies of the cymbals and hi hats alongside the punchy bass drum. The vocalist has a mostly brutal sounding delivery with occasional variance in his voice. It’s straightforward with ill intent to rattle your guts, and it does. The musicianship here is mature sounding and on point.
Sadly, there are a couple lulls and missteps in Beyond Human Concepts that we must at least mention. It’s unfortunate because Nihilty has so much variety going on that it still suffers occasionally from repetitiveness. That’s not entirely on them, though, as this genre is notorious for repetition. A couple songs do suffer from being unmemorable due to the complexity and uniqueness of some other songs. They are still enjoyable, however, but they just blend in a little too easily and get lost. It’s a little more noticeable here due to the short length of the album. Coming at little less than thirty minutes, a song or two ends a tad early and abruptly. They could have fleshed out a few ideas a little further. I’m not a big fan of overly short full lengths. But honestly, it’s just some minor flaws that’s holding it back a bit. The talent and songwriting are there. Also, and this might sound a bit nit-picky. But the structure of the album, I would have liked to see a different opener and maybe a slightly different arrangement of the songs. Occasionally from song to song it’s a bit jarring as opposed to sounding fluid, but that simply could be just me.
For the record, though, the score here is a bit closer to a four. It’s very close, but with a few forgivable and fixable flaws, it falls just short. With that said, it’s tough not to appreciate a band that knows exactly what they bring to the table and offer up other unique elements that enhances the listening experience further. It’s often what separates some bands from the pack. While they haven’t reached their full potential yet, Nihility surely has a bright future. There’s an undeniable uniqueness that’s present that will help propel them towards the top of the Death Metal heap. But for now, what we have here is a very talented young band that is about to release a damn solid, and enjoyable Blackened Death Metal album. 
(3.5 / 5)
