Review by JD on October 27, 2015.

I have been given a kind of strange one here named Nihilistinen Barbaarisuus, ambient black metal, sung completely in Finnish and coming out of Philadelphia PA and not from Helsinki. Yes, I just told you what you read… strange huh? Let us dive right in and see what this is all about.

On the surface, the music is harsh and sparse sounding, with the vocals nearly lost in the mix as some sort of whispering aggressive sound that even if it was sung in some other language, is completely non-legible. Unlike Emperor’s vocal sound which is still legible, Nihlistinen Barbaarisuus seem to just be plainly lost in the cacophony of what was happening.

The shocker of the whole thing, is that the guitarist Mika Mage is the guitarist for one of my favorite progressive instrumental acts Lawrence’s Creation. While LC was amazing filled with amazing riffs, stupendous arrangements and mind blowing melodies Nihlistinen Barbaarisuus is dark and brooding with little of the way of melody variety and has none of the brilliance that LC had brought. NB is just a wall of sound and that is not the good sort of ‘wall of sound’ either.

Plainly put and I will be blunt as hell; the whole album is just forgettable and uninspired. Guess Mr. Mage needs to rethink his involvement here. If you want black metal, pull out your Venom collection or the first couple of Bathory records and use this CD as a convenient coaster for your drink as you listen to Venom on the stereo. Never give in to the urge to actually play this album – car crashes are interesting to see, but you never want to have one.

This album needs to be ignored, for the sake of metal everywhere.

Rating: 0.5 out of 10