In this self-titled voyage, Nathair conjures a tempestuous black metal that both honours its lo-fi roots but also transcends them with wakened sharper clarity. The production once cloaked in a gauzy, mist-like haze, now unfurls revealing intricacies that were previously shrouded. Guitars hiss and sear with volcanic fury, yet the mix allows each tremolo-picked cascade to breathe, each blast-beat to resonate, as if the music itself pulses with a living heartbeat.
A chill wind sweeps across this album where a songwriting bloom that springs from the duo’s earliest seeds, now unfurling in sharper relief. The guitars coil as vipers beneath a moonless sky, and the drums as summoning storms on distant, frozen plains. Yet even in this unrelenting blackness, there is room for nuances, at moments, the rhythm loosens into jagged, almost folk-tinged cadences, as if peering ahead to the acoustic blend that appears later on the eighth track dismantling the fury and offering a fleeting reprieve before the final descent.
This is not the saw-edged attack of the prior six tracks but something more spectral, an aural hallucination that beckons one to peer into abysses of solitude.
The closing piece, a dark ambient piece recalling the duo’s debut yet refracted through the lens of newfound purpose. This record is a crucible that gathers grief, rage, and transcendence into a single, shivering form. One is drawn into scenes of cosmic decay, blood-soaked ice, phantom fortresses beyond oak doors, only to be cast adrift in mist and emptiness.
There is beauty here, but it is the beauty of frostbitten roses and twilight necropolises, fragile and fleeting, their petals wilting even as they bloom. When the guitars recede and the ambient haze closes in, one stands breathless at the edge of everything known.
The record leaves behind a trail of flickering lantern light, guiding wanderers deeper into the night’s embrace, beckoning the listener to feel the rasp of frost on their skin, to taste iron on their tongue, to smell the acrid smoke of stars burning out. So close your eyes and press play once more and let the serpent’s coil, let the fires blaze, and let the mist enfold you in its silent symphony.
Courtesy of @maodagloria
D.T.B. Records will release their self-titled debut album internationally. Pro-Audio Tape coming soon!
