These are troubled times for Blake Judd and the revolving door of musicians that have formed Nachtmystium over the years.
His dalliance with heroin and the alienating behaviour it has provoked provide all of the fuel for the solipsistic fire in which he burns, returning to a band he once proclaimed dead to document his defiance in the face of adversity. Fireheart gets off to a faltering start, a clumsy intro building into a rousing chorus, before the slowly-burning beauty of Voyager and its closing melodramatic solo provide an early highlight. All descends into chaos on Into The Endless Abyss, a bone-rattling exercise in the roughly hewn black metal fusion with which the band made a name for themselves. The World… is starkly autobiographical. It lays bare Blake’s blackened heart, detailing a struggle within which he is clearly still entrenched, and determined to survive. Black metal has always embraced self-destructive themes; here they are all too vividly realised on a listening experience as compelling as it is at times uncomfortable.
Via Century Media
