Album Review: Rivers of Nihil - Rivers of Nihil
Reviewed by Dan Barnes
This year most definitely seems to be looking like a golden one for Reading, PA’s progressive death metal mob, Rivers of Nihil. Their Aggressive Progressive tour laid waste to British venues in the late Winter, and they are due for a return to do the very same thing to such European festivals as Brutal Assault, Alcatraz, Summer Breeze and Dynamo, among others. There’s also a stop at Catton Park where they’ll lock progressive metal horns with Gojira and Mastodon on the Sunday of Bloodstock Open Air.
Then, on top of all that, there’s the impending release of their fifth, and self-titled new full-length at the end of the month to look forward to. Sometimes, a self-titled album not being a debut can ring alarm bells but can signify a band looking to either return to their core sound or to reinvigorate themselves. I draw attention to Obituary (2017), Suffocation (2006), and Killing Joke (2003) as reasons to be optimistic.
Familiarity with the band’s corpus of work tells you Rivers of Nihil is not a band in need of a revamp, so I would offer the use of their name for this album is to show what they are about in 2025. In the four years since the release of The Work, Rivers have been no slouches in putting out new material.
The Sub-Orbital Blues, the opening tune here, was initially released as a single as far back as June 2023; huge in intent and vast in scope, from the very outset of the album you are reminded of Opeth’s dense guitar tones, combination of clean and gruff vocals and complex earworms. It’s a comparison that you’ll come back to a number of times across the fifty-minute runtime, sounding of the Swedes, rather than like them.
Sub-Orbital… was featured on the Winter tour (as was a second single from ‘23, Hellbirds, which, curiously, does not make it onto the album), and it’s a brave band who lean heavily into unfamiliar material; yet Rivers debuted two tracks previously unavailable at the time: Criminals and House of Light, and these have made it to the album.
Criminals blends a jazzy bassline with raw and bile-filled roars, classic metal guitar parts and ghostly whispers. Unless I’m very much mistaken, there’s also a banjo sitting there at the end. House of Light, however, is a far more aggressive beast, built around fat chugging guitars and experimental riffs; the saxophone, prevalent across the record, takes on a more ominous role, acting as a warning until it settles to join the bass in supporting the whole thing.
House of Light is very much the final part of the album’s central triptych, in which the more experimental side of Rivers of Nihil is allowed to spread its wings. Despair Church begins with what sounds like those wings being beating, intersecting vocals soar as the intense guitars grind away. Then it switches in an instant and we’re confronted by some chill jazz just long enough to lull you into a false sense of security and deliver a punch in the face.
Part two – for want of a better word – comes in the form of Water & Time, which launches like the electronic soundtrack to an Eighties sci-fi movie; synths sketch complex patterns, paving the way for huge drums and massive guitars to unveil some of the fiercest moments on the album.
Evidence and America Death are where Rivers get the most directly Deathy – the first through sawing guitars and a rampant charging riff; the second through face-melting chugs that barely conceal a doozy of a hook.
There’s no getting away from Rivers of Nihil’s extensive scope; whether that be through the post rock and black metal rasps of The Logical End, or the twisted Seventies TV theme vibes of Dustman, the band is never predictable, and neither is the album.
Messrs Uttley and Biggs have done it again, assembling a band who have the ability to release their creative vision. But Rivers of Nihil isn’t just something to be admired, it’s a rampaging extreme metal album that shows what skill and creativity can achieve in the right hands.
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