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Nihil Invocation – Blood Upon The Gates At Dawn

nihil invocation – blood upon the gates at dawn

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During the band’s lifespan since its formation in 2016, Nihil Invocation has already amassed a respectable discography with the great common denominator being raw and unpolished punk-style Black Metal. So great is the surprise when this fifth full-length album arrives and it sounds yet distinctively different from all previous work. Whether Deathwalker will take his musical brainchild in a different direction remains to be seen, but for now, we first have our teeth to sink into this remarkable new work.

While the above may sound a bit overly dramatic, Deathwalker has indeed made quite a musical turnaround with ‘Blood Upon The Gates At Dawn’. The very gritty nature of the music has been tempered somewhat and in return has come a more harmonious and almost accessible sound. The heavy Punk-driven garage-like aggressiveness has also disappeared for the most part, giving way to a slower pace and an almost Folky undertone. With this, the venom seems to have disappeared a bit from the music, but Deathwalker still shows to be a man of minimal approach even now. The single-guitar riffs and melodies are still the common thread throughout the album, also connecting it to the previous Nihil Invocation recordings. With this, he still fully lives up to the band name and possibly slides a little closer to the core of a band like Ildjarn. A song like ‘Of Mystic Ember And Bronze Hearth’ best captures the soul of Nihil Invocation in its new format, as far as I’m concerned: a beautiful song, with a slow heartbeat in which the catchy and Folky melody plays the leading role.

Whether this new approach is also yours is, of course, a matter of musical taste and frame of reference, but fact is that Deathwalker can seemingly effortlessly reshape his Nihil Invocation without renouncing its origins. Personally, I wouldn’t mind if he keeps the band on this turn, this bit of experimentalism and a more ostentatious flirtation with Folk combined with the Nihil Invocation blueprint rawness tastes fine to me.

Self-Released

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