Thursday, August 6, 2009

Nadja & Black Boned Angel - Nadja & Black Boned Angel (20 Buck Spin, 2009)


Nadja & Black Boned Angel - II








Well fuck. I only had to wait a fucking year for this to come out. May of '08, I reviewed Christ Send Light, the teaser EP these guys put out in anticipation of the full length, which was supposed to be out by the end of the year. Unfortunately, we ended up waiting until July for this bad boy to come out. The question is, was it worth the wait? Fuck. Yes.

Two epic 20+ minute tracks of raw doom bliss. However, these songs aren't quite as Jesu-esque as Christ Send Light and are much less accessible. They actually sound more like what you'd expect a collaboration between Nadja and Black Boned Angel to sound like.

The first track starts out all buzzing ambient, then it jumpstarts at about 6:30 and your walls start crumbling. Just gorgeous monster doom, tearing up your speakers. That doesn't last for too long, though. The beauty and percussion drop out and it morphs into a swarm of shrieking eels. An absolutely terrifying wall of sound that stays course for the last 10 minutes of the song. Like I said, much less accessible than the teaser.

As with the first song, the second begins with some ambience, an ocean breeze with a dark undercurrent, the impending doom easily recognizable. After what seems like an eternity of buildup, a slow drum beat makes it's way into the enormous mass of hiss. Seriously, this shit is fucking gigantic. Like a titanic black sun, pulsing in it's last moments alive, about to go supernova. Eventually you have no idea who's doing what. It's all one big fucking beautiful mess. But there is no final catharsis. Instead, all of that accumulation, the song itself is the explosion. And everything trickles out, loses steam, fades into nothing.

This doesn't even rank on a scale of epicness. It is too epic for labels. Regardless if you're a fan of Nadja or BBA or a total newb, this is fucking required.

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