Nachtmystium is a band which has been receiving an awful lot of press lately, and I don't know why.

I don't want you to misunderstand me; they (or at least this record has, since this point, taken some "new" direction, though we need not concern ourselves with that as it is not on display here at all) are perfectly competent at what they do, which is extremely raw black metal, with the curious rhythmic stiffness which it seems goes along with nearly all American metal (at this point, no doubt, entirely imagined by me). Nachtmystium, being a rerelease of the band's EP from 2003, is 25 minutes of completely straight-ahead black metal. Everything's fast and grainy, and the vocals in particular are—well, shit, I dunno, necro! Kvlt! You get the idea.

The songwriting in general is kind of your statistically average underground black metal style: there is the Burzum-esque melancholy which many USBM bands have done lovely things with (though not, in my opinion, taken to the sort of harmonically Minimalist heights that someone like Nargaroth has achieved with some of his higher-minded efforts), and a little Black Legions sensibility, all wrapped up in a production job that will strip the paint from your house—er, cave. Belfry. Rookery, let's say rookery.

It's all well and good, but I still feel a little weird, recommending this record in particular, over all the other incredibly underground black metal releases that float off every shore like swarthy, uneducated immigrant wastrels circa 1889. It, I might concede, has the slight edge. There are points where the riffs do in fact rise above being merely functionally black and do actually grab the attention of the listener. There is a guitar solo. But I also got this record for free, whereas Battle Kommand Records wants you to give them 9 bucks for it. Given the same choice, I might go ahead and buy myself an extremely necro bacon cheeseburger with fries.