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TEMPLE NIGHTSIDE
Condemnation

Nuclear Winter (2013)
Rating: 8/10

Whooahh! Nuclear Winter has done it again. Clearly not just happy with releases from bands such as Ensnared, they’ve now trawled the black depths of Australia and dredged up the formidably named Temple Nightside – a two-man band of the most despicable order which consists of multi-instrumentalist / vocalist IV and his drummer pal Basilysk.

After one demo EP (2011’s Prophecies Of Malevolence) and a split project with Canada’s Antediluvian, the gruesome twosome have come up with this murky eight-track debut album which is one of the most obscure things I’ve heard in 2013.

When black metal first began to make a real name for itself a majority of the best bands, ie Graveland, Darkthrone, Behemoth, Veles, et al, were masters at providing really obscure sounds of evil, and Temple Nightside are clearly on the same expedition of the unhinged.

This is pretty grim stuff with predictable lo-fi production. In fact, it’s the sort of album that may well have been recorded in the billowing depths of Mordor, with Temple Nightside bridging the gap between the starkly ambient and the black smoke of early Bathory.

Throughout the guitars are distant, but yet have the sinister echo of something akin to the devil’s legion’s tools being clattered and clanged in order to shape another beast to take to the earth. The tempo is often mid-paced, which makes for a more interesting and atmospheric listen. While IV’s vocals are remote and bewitching, casting a dark shadow over the battlefield like the black wings of a Nazgul.

The album opens with ‘Shrine Of Summon (The Great Opposer)’; a horrifying soundtrack of primitive, tinny guitars and flashing drums, it gives a cavernous effect to proceedings. While ‘Exhumation; Miseries Upon Imprecation’ is a rather harrowing affair with drone-like distant guitars and more hammer and tong clattering which is slower than a heartbeat.

The band resort to frothing mode with the savage regression of ‘Abhorrent They Fall…’. Probably the album’s most straightforward black metal cut, it still reeks of the sinister and the suspenseful.

Like a lot of black metal acts, Temple Nightside can’t help but throw in a few soundtrack moments, ‘Pillar Of Ancient Death (Commune 2.1)’ simply existing as a distant rumble before the harsh guitars of ‘Dagger Of Necromantic Decay (Eater Of Hearts)’ come wailing in like some descending demon spiralling out of control into the fiery pits of hell.

I have to admit that despite a strong fascination with black metal over the years, I often found too many bands reliant on the symphonic or in some cases boasting rather irritating vocals. With Nightside Temple though, I get a real feel for the terror and the stuffy with this opus.

Despite of a couple of tracks being overlong and rather bereft of activity, like ‘Ascension Of Decaying Forms’, this is one claustrophobic cellar of sound I really don’t mind stepping into. Cast aside your doubts that obscure black metal is dead, because Temple Nightside are very much proof that the hills are alive with the sound of evil.

Neil Arnold

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