ANAAL NATHRAKH – Domine Non Es Dignus

ANAAL NATHRAKH’s latest release entitled Domine Non Es Dignus, happened to be very interesting. The Nathrakh invasion started with the release of their 2 first demos as the album Total Fucking Necro, when the band’s sound was completely a brutal, crude and powerful. Asides from their first official release The Codex Necro they managed a similar kind of sound, still brutal and extreme but somehow the composition of the songs became more complex. Their next release was an EP entitled When Fire Rains Down From The Sky, Mankind Will Reap As It Has Sown, that was very different from everything that they’ve done before. Seeming to experiment with completely clean and well produced sound, the songs still remained composed brutally, with the special collaboration of Seth and Attila Csihar from Aborym.

When ANAAL NATHRAKH announced they were in the studio recording Domine Non Es Dignus for Season of Mist Records, I really didn’t know what to expect from them. First of all it was a big change moving from the underground English label Mordgrimm to Season Of Mist. The point is the essence didn’t change, the band still sounds great and powerful. ANAAL NATHRAKH has evolved... Their songs might sound more polished, and they even included clean vocals in some tracks (Do Not Speak, This Cannot Be The End), they are experimenting with other sides of their own music in a positive way with a more polished sound in production, and some melodic composition, proving that Brutal Black Metal doesn’t have to be crude and noisy always. Vocalist V.I.T.R.I.O.L. said that he will never reveal the lyrics of ANAAL NATHRAKH but the song titles describe the aggressive sound and the anti-social attitude of this band very well. Domine Non Es Dignus intro entitled I Wish I Could Vomit Blood On You People gives you a good example of this.

My favorite songs from this album are The Oblivion Gene (downloadable months ago from a live performance at the BBC), Do Not Speak (with a clean voice part, completely inspired by Emperor), Revaluation Of All Values, Swallow The World and Rage, Rage Against The Dying Of The Light. The music composition is more melodic and complex than the last release and some riffs sound completely influenced by classical brutal death metal. V.I.T.R.I.O.L. is in my opinion one of the most brutal vocalists ever... he pukes out one of the greatest voices in the scene without any kind of distortion or harmonizers. And that’s notorious in every song of ANAAL NATHRAKH from any album. It is also worthy to mention Irrumator's work for this album, in songs like Do Not Speak and The Oblivion Gene you can notice his extraordinary creativity and musical talent.
But Domine Non Es Dignus has a little weakness. At some point it might sound a bit repetitive. For example, in the song The Final Destruction Of Dignity they managed very similar tones to other songs in the album, it gave me the illusion of deja-vu. The song This Cannot Be The End is the one I liked less from all... It's probably the only song that doesn't sound 100% ANAAL NATHRAKH, still it includes another clean voice part which sounds amazing.
ANAAL NATHRAKH is not an ordinary Black Metal band, and Domine Non Es Dignus is a great album that you must hear if you feel the need for brutality and a great new concept for this genre.