Niden Div 187 - Impergium
Review: Finding a niche in the hybrid between black metal and melodic grindcore, Niden Div 187 bash out songs in the style of other high-speed violence bands like Zyklon-B or early Impaled Nazarene. Primal animalism howls over rising melodies in the thrashing of contradictory passages over a pummeling dissassociative ambient array of drum tempo fixtures. To most people, this sounds like a synthesizer playing behind a threshing machine; finer tastes find in this music work reminiscent of metal bands like Cryptopsy or Suffocation, those who innovate tempo and its origin in placement to melody perhaps only so that others can adapt new styles from it.
The prime value of this experimentation is the further evolution of the stream of melody concept inserted into genre canon by Morbid Angel in their seminal song "Maze of Torment," here a similar idea represented in the counterpoint components of these melodies and the consequent arrangement of lead percussion to emphasize their opposition. While this makes for very visible concepts, it does not carry much weight beyond a general concept of aggressive intensity, which while holding well with the music buffers any analysis in the listener with this overarching design and thus relies upon abrupt and often strikingly distant changes in structure. Blasting mayhem, chopped into bits and strung together with serpentine paradox, is the language of this album.
Unquestionably the music is beautiful; in its simplicity elegant and in its violence hyperreal, these fragments of tonal language are impressively delicate and yet in their simplicity unavoidably vocal. However, much of this music seems to emphasize the empty over the chaotic, bending structures from already-defined avenues of musical building; some elements, such as drop-dead-sudden track endings, are aesthetic flourishes from other black metal bands. Its melodic progressions are basic patterns of the scale laid out in melodies designed to emphasize repeated dynamic motion and concluding extensions of extreme notes, rather than melodies supporting a central idea or a more self-defining melodic idea. Nothing here will break ground, but in the meantime, it's a rocker.