My favourites, the two I love to make noise, tis Anaal Nathrakh

ANAAL NATHRAKH-PASSION (9)
Candlelight Records

There’s a wry sense of contentment that enters the mind when it’s known Anaal Nathrakh are releasing a new album. Their music stands as an allegory to the rise of the Industrial Age, born in the Ironbridge Gorge mere miles from where this terror-struck duo had their formative years. To this day, that industrial legacy has left a strong and sometime bitter impression upon the landscape and its inhabitants. Midlanders are often harangued by the rest of the country for their linguistic tone and inexcusably ignored in their contribution to cultural history, which cannot ever be justified, but leaves little wonder as to how the area gave birth to Metal and its bastardised progeny Anaal Nathrakh, back with new release ‘Passion.’

Close your eyes and relish the terror-vomit polluting your ears. As the introductory moments of ‘Volenti Non Fit Iniuria` impress on you, erupting into V.I.T.R.I.O.L’s abominable hatespeak, watch for the perceptible shuffle as you realise you’re feeling a little sick in your own skin. Merely two songs later track ‘Post Traumatic Stress Euphoria` will deliver you into your very own, richly deserved bath of brimstone. The incredible production talent of Kenney ever furthers the illustrative sonic nature of Anaal Nathrakh, here outlying his intent to guarantee they are, in perpetua, the most horrifyingly heavy prospects of sound in musical history. Their incremental aesthetic and structural changes take them ever further from their purist Black Metal roots of ‘Codex Necro’ towards their unknowable aim. Critique based upon past works is anathema, but there exists no yardstick to judge A.N with but themselves, so on that, this exists as their most balanced work…albeit a balance of pure, unadulterated hatefuck. It could just be that ‘Passion’, an aural cacophony of bile soaked spite is truly the elixir of heavy. It surely has intent to destroy you. The sky burns, the sky has indeed been set aflame.

Reviewed by Sam Thor Rhodes