A while back, I reviewed Ecstacy/Agony by Nirensimt, which I said was;
a fucking masterpiece of Atmospheric Black Metal.
And that;
if you have any interest in the Black Metal genre, then you need to go and buy this fucking record.
Bold praise from me, for sure, but words I stand by, so you can imagine that when I was offered an advance copy of the new Nirensimt single, Monarch, which is due out on January 17th 2025, then my expectations were higher than Snoop during a walking tour of Amsterdam.
But, with something this highly anticipated there is always the chance that it won’t live up to expectations. That it will fall short. That you will find yourself wondering just hwwre it all went wrong…
This doesn’t happen anywhere here, by the way, Monarch is a straight up black metal classic. It’s just I know that they’ll read this review and I wanted to fuck with them a little.
No, Nirensimt deliver something that is completely other to their last release, but at the same time seems to be the logical next step in the Nirensimt development.
There are the obvious Atmospheric Black Metal qualities involved in Monarch, as well as a toe or two dipped deeply into the lake of Symphonic Black Metal, but there is a much more raw approach to Monarch than there is on Ecstacy/Agony. There’s almost a punk element running through the song – don’t worry, good punk, not The sodding Offspring – and the chorus is, dare I say it, almost straight forward heavy metal, admittedly with screaming and tortured vocals over the top.
Even though Monarch is a complex song, as you would expect with vicious riffs and blast beats galore, it also feels as if it doesn’t try and show off for the sake of showing off. As you can imagine, I listen to a lot of Black Metal and one of my pet peeves is when a song just seems to become complicated for the sake of it. As if the band or artist responsible feels they have to say ‘Hey! Look how clever we are!’ instead of following the tune where it chooses to go. Fortunately, Monarch doesn’t suffer from that as Nirensimt lets the music lead the dance and happily takes it by the hand towards its destination.
There is zero doubt that Monarch is a brilliant record, as well as a statement that Nirensimt is ready to take 2025 by the throat and shake the shit out of of it, and I have no problems recommending that it should be top of your list of stuff you need to buy this coming January 17th.
Head on over to the Nirensimt Bandcamp page and wait for the next evolution of Nirensimt to begin.
