By Isiamon of Immolith
Last September I interviewed an esoteric black metal band Rêx Mündi, who had released their debut full length album through the French label Debemur Morti Productions. This month I decided to review the latest offering from this label by another band that many might characterize as esoteric black metal, In Bondage to the Serpent by Nunfuckritual. According to Debemur Morti’s press release that accompanied the album promo that I recieved, Nunfuckritual is “the bastard spawn of Teloch (Nidingr, Mayhem), Espen T. Hangård (Altaar), Dan Lilker (Nuclear Assault) and Andreas Jonsson (Tyrant), NUNFUCKRITUAL’s debut album In Bondage To The Serpent crawls from the gutter like a diseased, decayed and decrepit corpse; a choking dirge; a hideous, malformed infestation of filthy underground metal that ignores trends, defies categorization and brings together some of the darkest, blackest, nastiest manifestations ever committed to tape.”
Nunfuckritual
There are six tracks on this beast, all hovering around the seven minute mark. What the listener gets is not far from what the label describes. This ritual contains about 45 minutes of slow dirge like slimy black metal. This is an album to me seems best fitted to listening to with headphones on and being consumed in it’s entirety. One track leads nicely into the next without a single track being an absolute stand out to me. I listened to In Bondage to the Serpent for the first time outside with a fire blazing in my fire pit, and I’ll say it certainly excels in oozing evil. The production of the album is a highlight for me, with a thick heavy nasty guitar tone and evil riffs and chord voicings. The drum production is a plus for me as well, being that the drums sound natural without the clicky sounding kick drums that ruin so many modern metal albums for me. Just check out the drums on track five “Parthenogen” to hear what I’m talking about. Vocally it’s not surprising that Attila Csihar makes a guest appearance on this album as well. I say that because Espen’s performance reminds me a bit of Attila’s performance on De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas. Lots of whispering, anquish and menace in the vocals throughout the album. If you are looking for a barrage of blast beats and standard tremolo picked black metal riffs, this is not the album for you. Although if you are a fan of black metal with hypnotic trance inducing heaviness and atmosphere, then make sure you check out NunfuckRitual’s In Bondage to the Serpent.
