Band:	Nightbringer
Album:	Ego Dominus Tuus
Style:	Black metal
Release date:	September 2014

01. Prayer Of Naphal
02. Et Nox Illuminatio Mea In Deliciis Meis
03. Lantern Of Eden's Night
04. Things Which Are Naught
05. I Am The Gateway
06. Call Of The Exile
07. Where Fire Never Dreamt Of Man
08. The Witchfires Of Tubal-Qayin
09. Salvation Is The Son Of Leviathan (Alabas In Memoriam)
10. The Otherness Of Being

Music so occult it makes your player crash and refuses to leave your hard drive.

Yeah, Nightbringer's albums aren't known for being the most accessible works of black metal around, and this corrupted sticky file mishap illustrates how the laziest of you lot could walk past Ego Dominus Tuus without enjoying it: you have to earn it a little. Indeed, the Colorado-based bunch doesn't skimp on additional layers and lengthy tracks to make their art more impenetrable. Don't get me wrong, this isn't a weird avantgarde indigestible monument of wankery, it's just far from your usual blast-shriek-repeat BM. Having a firm foot in satanic orthodox black metal, Nightbringer still manage to differentiate themselves with a very un-American-like, soundscape-creating, gloomy and hateful black metal.

Now, those of you who are familiar with their previous efforts will notice a certain shift in their sound. Less discordant, less straight-forward and more on the atmospheric side. Without betraying themselves, Nightbringer actually sounds more mature. The complexity of the hashed strident guitars is now softened by a clearer harmonious production, which still allows the instruments to fade naturally in a very discreet, subtle echo effect - just a very thin haze really. Despite this change in engineering, the most notable difference remains the appearance of a strata of synths, which brings Ego Dominus Tuus's sound a weeeee-bit closer to something you'd hear in an Emperor album that would have been composed under the influence of horse tranquilizers. Said tranquilizers might be the explanation for the album's s e v e n t y - t w o minutes by the way.

Indeed, with such a nice chunk of time, the band found space to go from total blast-bleat frenzy in the beginning of the disc, to more ominous passages full of "foamy" synths as the album progresses towards the amazing closer titled "The Otherness Of Being". It takes a special kind of setting and some time to fully appreciate such a dense album, I have to admit. However, I'm rarely able to go through more than an hour of any kind of metal without losing attention, and this is undoubtedly attributable to the progressive nature of the songwriting.

We talked about drugs a little earlier. Being in a state of complete sobriety while writing these words, I find it easy not to mention all the references that come to mind while repeatedly playing this gentle beast of an album. But I just couldn't conclude without saying that I am assaulted by strong Darkspace vibes right from the very first track until the end of the piece. The soaring tremolos and the the perfect balance between organic warmth and technical cold of the production are probably the reasons for that. And all this richness of sound pushes me towards writing the risky affirmation that this is, to me, Nightbringer's best album to date.

"I am your God" is - I think - the translation for "Ego Dominus Tuus". Out of the context of their occult-themed lyrics, it sounds a little pretentious right? But hey, when you have to plead with yourself to keep postponing your plans in order to listen to the whole thing, it is the definite proof that there is a higher power at play that prevents you from pressing the stop button. Perhaps the same that keeps testing the patience of my explorer.exe.