Nebrus - From The Black Ashes

And the Black Metal Gods (I’m sure there are at least two of them) have smiled upon my sorry ass once again!  I literally jumped for joy when I received this album in the mail and rushed straight home to throw it in my stereo. Long time readers may remember the dripping hard-ons that General Blaspheme and I have for this band. If you don’t and/or my vulgar appreciation for Nebrus is completely new to you, then all you really need to do is listen to just one song and you’ll understand where I’m coming from (and you’ll probably need a new change of underwear as well).

From The Black Ashes starts off strong with “Apocalypse”, a blistering ride through the beginning of the end. They tease you a bit with a break in the bleak with a momentary slow down in tempo that almost feels like everything is going to be okay. Like the world isn’t going to end in this horrible fashion that they’re describing… and suddenly, the sting of reaper’s scythe finds it’s mark on your soul! An awesome way to START your album, if you ask me.

From there, Nebrus just takes your expectations and runs off with them by taking all the vileness of black metal and merging it the finer points of doom metal. It’s like if you took Under The Sign Of The Black Mark and Epicus Doomicus Metallicus, broke them both in half and glued the two halves together to make the greatest mixture of black metal and doom metal that any metal mind ever dreamed of… assuming the breaking/gluing process was successful.

I’m happy to report that Noctuaria’s voice is just as ravaged and raw as ever, which keeps her high on my Favorite Black Metal Vocalist list right between Stefan Fiori and Lord Serpent. This time however, Mortifero duties pertained only to the drums, which are every bit as punishing as they were in Twilight Of Humanity. It’s the same with the guitars. Throughout From The Black Ashes, they are almost always sped up to your standard black metal speed riffs, but occasionally they break off into dreary doom hooks that are always laid in on just the right moments.

But the crowning jewel of From The Black Ashes has to be it’s closing track, “Banquet Of Oblivion”. Hearing Noctuaria scream, “I DON’T EXIST!"

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