Nihlotep – Surrogate Panoptic Quantal Regality (2009)

If the Metal Olympics where to be instituted in the next few years, Nihlotep would win in several categories: Longest Black Metal Songs and The Most Lyrics per Song categories.

This band from California plays a mean Black Metal and they are not shy to let you know the have enough composition skills to write a couple of 13 + minute songs for their self-released first full length album.

Before you even think about it, this band does not play Ambient Black Metal and their songs are not composed mainly of synth arrangements and drone sounds with creepy shrieks thrown here and there. This band actually plays brutal songs from start to end for more than 10 minutes and impressive feat by it self alone. The only track that has some spacey stuff is their last track that also features one of the longest names for a song in history and it’s only 18 minutes long, but other than that, this album will blow you away from start to end.

Having one main vocalist and a backing one, helps this band create diversity between the screams that are mainly, Danni Filth style (maybe a little bit less high pitched, but right around there) and they never get old, I haven’t heard a band that used this style of vocals in quite a while and I find it quite refreshing in this band.

The music is surprisingly very good and it shows the band put a lot of work and effort into writing these massive songs, since there are tons of very diverse lyrics and the follow the moods in the music very well. The album starts with a very good mood setting song that includes the use of a mandolin and then it just breaks straight into hell with furious singing and brutal drumming accompanied by whirlwind guitar lines that will surely blast you away after that calm intro.

While the band is very good at playing music for a long time and composing very long songs they are also quite skilled in creating good sounding riffs and intricate parts that will make you listen to this album several times in order to fully pay attention to all the things that are going on.

“Surrogate Panoptic Quantal Regality” is one of the most brutal self-released albums I’ve heard in quite a while, the vocals, the drumming, the guitar lines and the bass guitar line all fall into place creating chaos, but a brilliant kind of chaos that could easily be appreciated by all fans of the genre. For an unsigned band, they are way better than many of the shit bands that are signed, so for all the labels reading this, check this band out before somebody else snatches them.

Release: 2009

Country: USA