NIGHTMARER – Deformity Adrift
Release Date: 5th May 2023
Label: Vendetta Records / Total Dissonance Worship
Bandcamp
Genre: Death Metal, Dissonant Death Metal, Tech Death Metal.
FFO: Ulcerate, Gorguts, Anachronism, Cosmovore, Aeviterne.
Review By: Eric Wilt
Once in a while you come across an album cover that is so beautiful and brutal at the same time that you have to give it a second look, or if you’re like me, you have to enlarge it and study it and try to figure out what the artist is trying to say. With its red sun in the background accented by the blues and reds leading up to the foreground, Nightmarer’s new album Deformity Adrift is one such album. And that’s just the beautiful part. The brutal part of the picture is in the foreground. To be honest, the picture looks as hard as shit, but I have no idea what going on. To the best of my discernment, there is at least one human contorted in a broken-back position with a number of arms and legs coming out of it. Or perhaps it’s a handful of people merging together in some monstrosity or other. Whatever the hell is going on here, the painting by Jeanne Comateuse is badass, and I can see a flag of this album cover adorning my wall sometime in the near future.
And that is a seamless segue into the songs on Deformity Adrift because, like the cover artwork, Nightmarer’s music is not easily grasped, and while both beautiful and brutal in their own right, the enjoyment is in listening to the songs over and over, enlarging them and studying them and coming out at the end enriched, at the very least.
While bands like Gorguts and Ulcerate have been carrying the torch of dissonant death metal for a longer time, up and comer Nightmarer has proven in their seven-year existence that they are a creative and ferocious force to be reckoned with. Take the opening track, Brutalist Imperator, for instance. Right out the gate, Nightmarer attacks the listener with a jarring cacophony of detuned dissonance. Mixing tempos and employing riffs that would take a mathematician to transcribe, the band keeps the tension high, while repeated listens open one’s eyes to the beauty that is to be found in the discord.
The band is made up of former members of Gigan, War from a Harlots Mouth, The Ocean, and a current member of Conquering Dystopia. With a pedigree like this, it is no wonder that the band, which is made up of John Collett on vocals, Simon Hawemann on guitars, Keith Merrow on guitars, Brendan Sloan bass, and Paul Seidel on drums, has quickly ascended to the top of the dissonant death metal pack.
Most of the tracks on the album including, Baptismal Tomb, Throe of Illicit Withdrawal, Suffering Beyond Death, Hammer of Desolation, and Obliterated Shrine push the limits of discordant riffs and experimental song structures, while never losing their edge or heaviness.
There are two interlude-like tracks on the album, Tooms, which sounds like the score to a horror film that features a protagonist walking around in an empty, haunted house, while the other interlude, Endstadium features unnerving feedback that almost sounds like something getting closer and closer to the listener. In both cases, the intention is to ratchet up the dread, and both tracks succeed stunningly.
As with most albums, amongst all of the slappers and bangers, there is quite often a song or two that a listener cannot get their head around. For me, that song on this album is undoubtedly Taufbefehl. With a pulsing beat that reminds me of industrial music, Taubefehl feels more like a bludgeoning than a listening experience. The song is not a total loss because it does have some fairly Nightmarer-esque sections, but the main riff and pounding snare makes it a skipper for me.
All in all, Deformity Adrift by Nighmarer is easily one of the best albums that will come out this year. Full of low-end heaviness and driving dissonance, Deformity Adrift is not just an album with a pretty cover, it is a towering achievement of dissonant death metal glory that will find its way onto not a few best-of, year-end lists.
(4.5 / 5)
