A new year has begun and Njiqahdda apparently have some self-imposed album quota to fill, because they're already released one full-length album and one EP. The former is called Serpents in the Sky and continues the band's tradition of playing mystical, astral post-black metal with hypnotic, drawn-out compositions and reverberated vocals. This one sees the band's sound becoming more conventional and articulated, incorporating lyrics sung in English, recognizable song structures and even guitar solos, which bring their music back into the human realm and away from the cosmic depths the band usually frequents.
It's definitely a solid Njiqahdda album, but there's probably 30 more of them planned for release in 2013, so I guess I'll wait and see what else they come up with before making my mind. You can listen to it in its entirety by clicking on the video below.
UGH. Please excuse the lack of updates, the final exams are once again upon me and every professor down at the uni is busy finding new ways of raping my sweet butt cheeks. As a direct result of that, listening to dumb metal has taken a back seat to studying my ass off with deadmau5 as background music. That Cattle Decap album is seriously the only metal I listened to during the last week or so, which bums me out. Whatever.
I'm now taking a break to sneak in a post about a band you may not have heard of, lovingly called Njiqahdda. They're an atmospheric/psychedelic/ambient post-black metal duo from the US and they play some of the most soothing black metal I've ever heard. You won't find any of the genre's usual staples here (i.e. lyrics about goats, praising Satan, killing priests, wearing gauntlets and corpsepaint), the band instead dealing with nature, astral projection, meditation, spiritualism, becoming one with the Universe and things like that. I suppose the easiest way to compare them is with Wolves in the Throne Room, but the music is much more quiet and subdued, even though there are plenty of harsh, filtered vocals and pounding drumming to be heard. All their songs have a hypnotic quality to them, employing various chanting vocals and repetitive patterns to convey a sense of grandeur and nothingness. It's like the soundtrack to wandering across an infinite barren landscape or finding yourself stranded on a distant planet.
Njiqahdda's songs are written and sung in a unique language the two nameless members have developed themselves, which is why you're seeing all these weird words that apparently don't mean anything. Add to this the unconventional cover art - check out the artwork for the Nil Vaaartului Nji EP, it's the polar opposite of a black metal cover - and the truckload of various albums, singles and EPs these guys put out every year and your hipster alert should be flashing red, telling you to steer clear of this. I'm going to ask you to go against your better judgment and give Njiqahdda a listen anyway. You might be surprised to find it's pretty damn good.
Or at the very least, it works well as background music for when you have to stay up all night studying for some shitty exam that comes only a day after the last shitty exam. Fuck those dickheads.
