Band:	Dragged Into Sunlight / Gnaw Their Tongues
Album:	N.V. [Collaboration]
Style:	Death metal, Blackened sludge metal
Release date:	November 13, 2015
A review by:	Auntie Sahar

01. Visceral Repulsion
02. Absolver
03. Strangled With The Cord
04. Omniscienza
05. Alchemy In The Subyear

Musical collaborations. There's so much that can go wrong with them if the parties involved don't know how to properly channel the sacred kundalini energy that allows them to naturally flow into each other's styles. Then again, there's so much that can go right if they do. N.V. is a collaboration between Dragged Into Sunlight and Dutch mad genius Mories in his Gnaw Their Tongues incarnation. You shouldn't have to ask which of those two is the case for this one.

The music on N.V. (that stands for Negative Volume, apparently) is just about everything you could expect out of two of the most vile and hateful-sounding bands ever to step foot on Planet Metal. As soon as "Visceral Repulsion" opens the album with the beautifully caressing audio sample of a murderer detailing how he strangled a victim, you know that shit is about to get real. This track in particular leans much more towards a Gnaw Their Tongues type of sound, more doomy, "thicker" than the riproaring ferocity of Dragged Into Sunlight, and dominated by the painful shrieks of Mories. When it was initially released before the album streamed in full, a few people were thus worried that N.V. was going to be swallowed up by Mories's sound. First impressions, however, can be misleading.

What follows from there is an absolutely wonderful blend of the bands' two sounds. The two combine quite splendidly, as on "Absolver" (personal favorite), where at first we're treated to a very crunchy, blastbeat-heavy style more reminiscent of Dragged Into Sunlight, before the track segways in the middle into more of a haunting, dark ambient type sound that you know is sitting in Gnaw Their Tongues territory. Interestingly enough, for a good portion of this album, although you can hear the Dragged Into Sunlight sound at many points, it feels more embracing of its black metal influence, even though it is still catchy and kind of sludgey, you can hear the kvlt side of things way more. Mories may have had a role in that, he may have not, but whatever the case is, it only further confirms how excellently these musicians fused their sounds together here.

The sound of N.V. is all over the place, and seems to cover all the various bases that both Gnaw Their Tongues and Dragged Into Sunlight have touched upon in their own discographies. It can therefore be very difficult at times to discern who was responsible for which part of the composition, Mories or the DIS guys. But that's exactly what makes it so fantastic. The sound of both bands just seems to come together into a natural synthesis that transcends both of their individual sounds. It's the same technique that made Altar amazingly good, that made I Shall Die Here amazingly good, and that this year is making N.V. amazingly good as well.

Throw up those horns and immerse yourself in what is unquestionably one of the most agonizing listening experiences of 2015.