Niden Div 187
Review: Permanent fury in the face of grimness is the striking music of Niden Div 187, a band who compose black metal from the elements of incomprehensible melody and almost military, digital-age precision beat blasting. Essentially simple and similar to many other bands in composition this music distinguishes itself by building intermediate segments of composition to link narrative phrases or mutated chorus fragments. The technique that propels this intricacy is the familiar ultra-fast metal strum, here modified with a whipping presence of wrist to produce a fluid dynamic of sound.
1. Black Water (4:20)
2. Retinence (3:18)
3. A View In The Mirror Black (3:46
4. Towards Judgement (4:04)
Length: 15:30
Thematic presence renders itself mostly aesthetic by consisting of developments along a single riff theme, and although managing to sound amazing when in counterpoint to an answering phrase, it mainly adds coherence through repetition and works well for that. The strict whisper-shriek of Henke (of Dawn) fills the background of a listener's mind while the forebrain is bathed in the waves of melodic distortion rolling out of polyrhythmic blast beat combinations; the vocals are cued to the walking cadence of each beat, and the simple riffs focus on diffusive counterpoints which roll out the sustained melodic tones.
Like the theatricalism black metal bands emulate the theory of Niden Div 187 includes an appreciation for the major theme; in simplicity's sake that is what they expound here, a theme in combinations in a style of composition not quite to the layering of Burzum but beyond the counter-bounce of most Venom-styled black metal bands. Immaculate melodies and extended phrases are not the vitality here but the texture which continually unveils the moldings of thematic form. Consequently this release is enjoyable through both visceral and intellectual channels.
Review: Finding a niche in the hybrid between black metal and melodic grindcore, Niden Div 187 bash out songs in the style of other high-speed violence bands like Zyklon-B or early Impaled Nazarene. Primal animalism howls over rising melodies in the thrashing of contradictory passages over a pummeling dissassociative ambient array of drum tempo fixtures. To most people, this sounds like a synthesizer playing behind a threshing machine; finer tastes find in this music work reminiscent of metal bands like Cryptopsy or Suffocation, those who innovate tempo and its origin in placement to melody perhaps only so that others can adapt new styles from it.
The prime value of this experimentation is the further evolution of the stream of melody concept inserted into genre canon by Morbid Angel in their seminal song "Maze of Torment," here a similar idea represented in the counterpoint components of these melodies and the consequent arrangement of lead percussion to emphasize their opposition. While this makes for very visible concepts, it does not carry much weight beyond a general concept of aggressive intensity, which while holding well with the music buffers any analysis in the listener with this overarching design and thus relies upon abrupt and often strikingly distant changes in structure. Blasting mayhem, chopped into bits and strung together with serpentine paradox, is the language of this album.
Unquestionably the music is beautiful; in its simplicity elegant and in its violence hyperreal, these fragments of tonal language are impressively delicate and yet in their simplicity unavoidably vocal. However, much of this music seems to emphasize the empty over the chaotic, bending structures from already-defined avenues of musical building; some elements, such as drop-dead-sudden track endings, are aesthetic flourishes from other black metal bands. Its melodic progressions are basic patterns of the scale laid out in melodies designed to emphasize repeated dynamic motion and concluding extensions of extreme notes, rather than melodies supporting a central idea or a more self-defining melodic idea. Nothing here will break ground, but in the meantime, it's a rocker.