Album Review: Nunslaughter – Satanic Chaos Legions
Reviewed by Eric Clifford
Regardless of anything else you might accuse Nunslaughter of, one thing they definitely aren’t doing is fucking about. Their brand of abundantly thrashy black/death has been pulverising neck vertebrae since the late 80’s, and at this point they’ve clearly decided that no amount of subtlety or nuance will ever substitute just kicking the shit out of you. This isn’t music intended to prompt deep intellectual engagement. They’re not trying to get you to use your brain – they’re trying to kick it clean out your skull.
It would be reductive and pithy to say that Nunslaughter recycle too many Slayer riffs, but it also wouldn’t be wholly inaccurate. You’ll know whether you’ll like this just by asking yourself whether you like Nunslaughter. I find that it’s often passion that carries stuff like this, a need to feel that the band believe in it for you yourself to believe in it. To that end, “Satanic Chaos Legions” and “Jesus Fucking Dies” launch out the starting blocks bristling with deeply unethical weaponry at breakneck speeds, red froth billowing between the yellowed fangs of raw OSDM riffs, percussion like a fusillade and vocalist Don of the Dead yelling like he never liked his vocal chords anyway. It’s music for people who think that “innocent bystander” is shorthand for “someone who should’ve gotten the fuck out the way”, with tracks like “Lucifer the Light” skydiving in at you with an apoplectic storm of Repulsion riffs and a relentless kick-snare beat that feels less like drumming and more like your eardrums are being fracked. They know when to herald the end times too – observe with trembling “Heavenless”, the crumbling death-doom of Asphyx pouring from it in putrid runnels.
This isn’t exactly long form music; no tracks stretch over four minutes with a good chunk being below two. Berserker energy seizes much of it, clamping jump leads to it’s adrenaline glands and firing a million volts through them a minute. Feverish grindcore zeal from “Die Your Own Death” floors the accelerator on an Abrams tank and mulches the congregation below its treads. Yet always comes that dogged sense of dejá fu – the feeling that you’ve had your arse kicked like this before. Yes, it’s speedy and aggressive, but even by its own standards some tracks feel to be much more honed than their comrades do. “Listen to the Lies” is very short and substantially a sample – it’s vicious, but so is everything else, and it feels somewhat throwaway by comparison.
Some of the more hardcore influenced songs leave me a little on the cold side – could be more of a personal thing (it almost definitely is) but uniformly the more death/thrash a track was the greater I liked it. So momentary incidences of filler and genre stylistic choices that I’m not as warm to did leash my enthusiasm a bit – perhaps they’ll count less against it for you though. I do still feel that the band could do with spreading their charred wings a little – they play things about as safe as an album that feels to be force-feeding you bleach ever can – and the occasional switch up in say, time signature or lobbing in a couple more solos would be welcome. A few more toys in the torture chamber, y’know? But equally…I mean it’s fuckin’ Nunslaughter man. Every time I start to criticise them I get the unnerving sense that Satan stands at my shoulder, shaking his head and dreaming up inventive new torments to visit upon my hapless form as revenge for my being a wuss.
Again, it comes down to something I said earlier: You’ll know whether you’ll like this just by asking yourself whether you like Nunslaughter. I first got into them on their “Angelic Dread” album in 2014 – and I like this new one for much the same reasons that I like that one. The flipside contention that they’ve not really changed or evolved since then would be mean even if there would be a kernel of truth to it, but there’s no arguing with the results – Nunslaughter are doing this with the fire and venom lesser bands can only dream of. Each chord smacks into you like an axeblow, cleaving ravines through the milling corpse-pyre smog. It is metal as all fuck, and if Black, Death or Thrash stir any degree of fondness in you, then you should shoot this into your earholes immediately.
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