A Myriad of dead Stars

Descending Horizons

Twilight Inferno

Reflections of Emptiness

De Nihilo Nihil

Serenity

Fallen apart

Sirius

Ekpyrosis Suicide

Metastability

Philip Santoll - Vocals, Guitars, Programming.

NONEXISTENCE: "Nihil"      nonexistence    nonexistence666.com         twilight 

Composed, arranged, performed and produced by Philip Santoll

distributed in Switzerland by   

review  by dalia "gryphon_spirit" di giacomo ___             

Is  the universe as indifferent to us as we are to it (as Tom Flynn says)? Is indifference the real abyss, the ultimate emptiness, that "nihil" that annihilates? Strange and exciting philosophical thoughts are invited to fly in our mind, if we listen to this album, thoughts that lets us remind of  Parmenides, Lucretius and Heidegger. While the music leads us back to the glorious moments of classic Melodic Black  and Doom Death/Gothic.  Riding the mighty evocative keys of Black Metal, one man band Philipp Santoll adds an imponent touch  of cosmic atmospheric breath  that ends up to capture fragments of Doom, Gothic and death, combined in a  gloomy pact. The aggressiveness of extreme metal is reshaped and embellished in grandiloquent mid tempos, in nostalgic sorrows, in monumental domelike structures, in vast cosmic feral coldness. Mighty and glossy coated, this is the Atmospheric Cosmic Black metal (conceived in Antarctica? It seems so) that acts prophetic, illusionary, decadent, cruel. All this would sound pretentious and arrogant in itself, so the surprise is that we find no trace  of bombastic excess in "Nihil" . No trace of invasive symphonic epos, no grand opera. It is like a "normal" advanced dark band rich in  varied vocals, rich in  different guitar sounds. It is on the  key carpet and on the piano sounds that the sensations of spherical vastness is based, minimalist and/or highly melodic, acoustic  passages with  guitar arpeggios are also an important part of the musical structure as well as the very hard riffs that propel the mourning pain. "Nihil" is an intense experience that will never  let you fall in boredom. Placed somehow  among Cradle Of Filth, Lord Belial and Chthonic,  but  with mid/ slow, Doom oriented tempos, strong death grunts that morph into rasping screams (typical example of this kind of vocal expression is the track Reflections of Emptiness, whose very  beginning and very outro has some synthetic flavour à la The Kovenant), clean guitars, very sharp and immediate melodies.

Drums modules are decent and proper with a balanced distribution of toms, snare and fast kicking sounds, although i find the snare/toms sequence of beats quite repetitive in almost all songs. 

Absolutely attractive  are 3 pieces and exactly Serenity, Fallen apart and Sirius. Serenity is maybe the catchier among all songs , full of déjà heard influences yet fantastically appetizing, with such an addictive guitar work and an excellent final echo. Fallen  apart, on the contrary, is marked by that superior matrix of old Paradise Lost-ian nature with mesmerizing melodies and the same lead counterpoint (although with  different timbre of the sound), and though  the influence from the masters of Gothic/Doom Death is scandalous, again happens that miracle that you appreciate the song as modernization of the old enchantment, conveyed here with  feral vocals (both screams and grunts) and extreme metal fierceness. Awesome is  Sirius too, maybe the most cosmic, the most desperate, the angriest of all tracks in Nihil, driven by a sense of need.  Particularly oppressive depressive  is the final Metastability, reiterate, evil and saprophytic, like an organism  that eats decaying matter with torpid lamentation,  yet this song is still grieving and energetic enough  to give us a last punch and a last chill also thanks to the  heavy piano in the background (emerging in the breakdown) and to the calibrated guitars.

With this debut album, Nonexistence surely doesn't invent anything new, but interprets anew, in an elegant way, what was already done. Our mind resistance is subjugated, possessed once more by an immortal school of music. The message will never end under this sky full of indifferent stars and galaxies.

Rating: 8,5/ 10 

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