Imagine yourself walking down a crowded city street when you feel the presence of something ominous, you don't know what it is but it's definately something very, very big and very, very dangerous. Suddenly all goes quiet as everyone around you begins to focus on their shared sense of dread. It is at that point where you hear this presense announce itself... and then all hell breaks loose. This people, is only the first one minute and eight seconds of the new Anaal Nathrakh album In The Constellation of the Black Widow.
It's at this moment that any fears that AN may have finally lost their touch after releasing five previous mind-blowing releases this decade are laid to rest as Dave Hunt and mich Kenney beat you senseless with ridiculous speed and some of the most inhumanly extreme shrieks that I've ever heard in my life. That's before the melodic riff kicks in at 1:45 and leads into yet another of Dave's operatic choruses, showing off every aspect that I love about this band in less than two minutes.
For those unfamiliar with Anaal Nathrakh, they are the band that brought heavy metal kicking and screaming into the new millennium with The Codex Necro which single handedly made Marduk sound like Raffi. To this date, I still have yet to find a band within the metal genre heavier than them that's more than directionless noise for its own sake. (Intestinal Disgorge counts as enjoyable but their sound leaves so much to be desired in terms of artistic credibility.) If this sounds in any way intimidating to you, then you should probably not listen to Anaal Nathrakh. It also means that you're a complete pussy.
Musically, In the Constellation of the Black Widow features fewer tracks with clean choruses than their last two releases- only appearing in four out of ten tracks- and a hell of a lot more speed. That isn't to say that there aren't catchy parts to tracks like Oil Upon the Sores of Lepers and I am the Wrath of Gods and the Desolation of the Earth, it's just that ItCotBW is significantly less melodic than previous albums although there are plenty of melodic riffs and solos throughout the record but just enough to please the fans that they gained with their Domine Non Es Dignus and later Material.
As good as the entirety of ItCotBW is, there's one track that deserves special attention. That track is called... Satanarchist. Those familiar with the band's history will recognize this as an old track from their second demo and it's a beast. Whereas Anaal Nathrakh's is occasionally melodic, this is the only song of theirs that I'd consider to be beautiful. Don't get me wrong, Dave is still screaming his head off throughout the entire song, but Mick's riffs are just filled with so much passion and atmosphere that you you immediately stop rocking out and start actually soaking up each and every note played. Eventually the song begins to climax at atround the three minute mark and then Mick begins playing a riff so unexpectedly resplendent that comparisons to Pantera's Floods are inevitable. In fact, the combination of beauty and ugliness intertwining is the very essence of black metal that so many bands today don't seem to grasp.
The song also holds a special place in my heart since it continues Anaal Nathrakh's tradition of songs that reference philosophy and literature, in this case G.K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday, perhaps the greatest novel to have been destroyed by it's final two chapters and also contains my absolute favorite depiction of Satan in any work, even more so than the one in Goethe's Faust. For those of you wondering who Chesterton's Satanarchist is, I'll provide a quote, "To abolish God!" said Gregory, opening the eyes of a fanatic. "We do not only want to upset a few despotisms and police regulations; that sort of anarchism does exist, but it is a mere branch of the Nonconformists. We dig deeper and we blow you higher. We wish to deny all those arbitrary distinctions of vice and virtue, honour and treachery, upon which mere rebels base themselves. The silly sentimentalists of the French Revolution talked of the Rights of Man! We hate Rights as we hate Wrongs. We have abolished Right and Wrong." If that quote doesn't move you in some way, shape or form, then you simply aren't human.
Anaal Nathrakh deserves the title of band of the decade, and this record has done nothing to upset their previous five-release winning streak. Few bands can match aggression, intelligence, and composition the way that AN do and if you've liked any of their previous albums, then this is yet another must-buy.
9/10
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