Njiqahdda - Nji. Njiijn. Njiiijn.

Njiqahdda - Nortil Maatu (excerpt)


This record is friggin' ridiculous. And like most friggin' ridiculous records, this one's pretty tough to peg. Yeah, it could probably be brushed off as just another drop in the black metal bucket but let me assure you, it is much more than that.

Before I get too far into this, I need to make a comparison right up front. Nji. Njiijn. Njiiijn. reminds me a lot of The Heads' Dead In The Water... Like that record, Nji is non-fucking-stop. 4 tracks, all at least 15 minutes long, the entire thing clocking in at 1 hour and 12 minutes.

It's super repetitive, but I mean that in really really good way. The looping quality of Nji is what makes it stand out from the rest of the black metal out there. There are two main elements to Njiqahdda (pronounced nee-gee-kaa-daa): the blackened, growling vocals and the buzzing guitars. Ooooh the guitars. The riffs aren't the sort of thing you'd find Mick Barr doing (not that you really hear him playing a lot of riffs in Orthrelm or Ocrilim. He tends to...actually, I'm not exactly sure what he does.) but when the same riff is played for 10 minutes straight, it takes on a sublime drone quality.

That's another one of the reasons this isn't like your traditional black metal. When everything gets smooshed together, it's beautifully hypnotic. Nothing is crisp, everything sounds at least somewhat warbly and gritty, so it all kind of blends into a dense, crumbling mass of blown out drone. In a perfect world, this record wouldn't end. It would just keep going, the band turning into some kick ass black metal machine that can tear it up ad infinitum. I guess I'll just have to settle for hitting the play button again.

Check out this interview with one of the Njiqahdda guys where he talks about what their name means, their fabricated language, why he'd want to be reincarnated as either a rich dude or a falcon, and who he thinks would get the most out of Nji. Njiijn. Njiiijn.