Spoken in simple words Iconoclast, the new album by NAZXUL, is just mighty, devilish, bombastic and utterly dark. While this sum up may be a bit short for a review I have to go a bit more in into detail.
What the Australians have released with Iconoclast is nothing more than a malicious milestone in the field of bombastic Black Metal. A true apocalyptic manifestation, like all doors of hell have been opened.
Once again NAZXUL have excellently mastered the weaving of the majestic-symphonic keyboards into the overall music. Sometimes contrasting the magnificent guitars with more spherical tones, at other times broad majestic and sometimes even martial and triumphant – the whole spectrum this instrument has to offer is used here in a perfect way. Altogether there are 14 songs on Iconoclast while six of them being more or less keyboard instrumentals adding a form of soundtrack feel to the album. The other eight “real” songs also are heavily dosed with the keys but at no point do they take the whole room for themselves and always leave enough space for the other instruments and vocals to unfold. NAZXUL further manage it to build up the songs in a way that you won’t find any form of cheesiness or too thick pasted stuff.
Together with this well thought over process of song writing the drums also hit the ears in a heavy crushing way, creating a rather massive and delightful brutal and dark atmosphere. It’s obvious that there surely comparisons to a commercially successful band like Dimmu Borgir can be drawn here. But Iconoclast actually reaches the pole position in this comparison, because while also being very bombastic in its approach it also has to offer a great dose of aggression and sounds like an evil, more sinister and brutal brother of the Norwegians.
Due to the extremely high quality level of each song it isn’t surprising that you can’t just pick out one or two songs standing above the others. Each song is a little gloomy and black masterpiece. If I had to choose only one you should listen to, I would name the demonic, marching and war-like sounding yet also very balanced song Set In Array, but frankly speaking I could also have taken any other song. Choosing only one is just not possible.
Really – you hardly can find a better album in this genre. Being a big soundtrack-, audio play and keyboard junkie I personally maybe would have liked a just a bit more triumphant and marching sound and some spoken word passages (think of Bal Sagoth) but apart from this completely personal little remark NAZXUL’s Iconoclast is a truly perfect album! A definite must-have!