Of NATHR, bell-toll, windswept soundscape beckons, chiming, an almost harpsichord tone to herald ‘The Burial’. Lie back on the satin, fold arms, and let the tide take you. Six minutes elapse before the guitar becomes consciously noticeable, embroidered and woven slow, steady, patient and
undeniable as the Norns, keys flipping tumblers in the lock as the gate to eternal repose opens. At 10:24, when the lid closes and the soil begins to pile, though resigned and longing, comes hysteria, a panicked, futile clawing. Futile, as the darkness takes on weight, takes you in. Black liturgy here, and no benevolent forced icons to guide you on your way. At last, collapse into your true self, into nothing.
Droning, guttural, unaware – and if aware, unconcerned – with our eavesdropping. Bones click-clack as a cave-black angel sings. And then, the pain. Far more percussive, more blatantly unhinged than that come before. ORDO CULTUM SERPENTIS’ ‘Fillii Serpentis Nigri’ is not the subtle call, the luring into final nothingness, but the nothingness, the utter bleakness of it all formed into club and used as weapon, bludgeoning. Over. And. Over. At roughly midpoint, we realize what maybe what we’ve witnessed is a ritual in a below-ground gallery of the grotesque, the pummeling fading to hissing malevolence, the bones again, but only to lull us into false safely. For bludgeon has become hammering, incessant and unforgiving, quick and without mercy. A final last rite, a condemning to eternal demise.
In one fell swoop each, both NATHR and ORDO CULTUM SERPENTIS have, with Shadows Crawl, set a benchmark not only for themselves, but for blackened doom in 2022.
Review By: Lord Randall
NATHR / ORDO CULTUM SERPENTIS
Shadows Crawl
Signal Rex
5 / 6