Day: August 30, 2017

Here we are in the presence of another musician characterized by an apparent compulsive productivity: his name is Nagaarum, he comes from Hungary and Homo Maleficus is his fourteenth full length since 2011. I’ve already said my piece on the subject, but I repeat myself to avoid misunderstandings: a certain hyperactivity is always welcome, especially if it is subjugated to a crystalline talent, otherwise there is a great risk to disperse its potential in a frenzied hyperactivity. The Magyar musician, of whom despite everything I discover the existence only on this occasion, does not seem to be afflicted more than much by certain problems: his interpretation of black metal is quite personal without being brainiac (if we except the schizophrenic tempo changes of Vassal Nevelt) and develops in a nervous, disturbing and substantially lacking in stylistic stakes, while maintaining an aura of constant darkness. In about three quarters of an hour Nagaarum expresses through his music and in his mother tongue his point of view on the disaster that occurred in 2010 in Hungary, when the breaking of the dam containing the waste material of an aluminum factory pushed a tide of red sludge on 40 square kilometers of land surrounding the village of Kolontar, causing several victims, irreparable damage to local agricultural activities and the disappearance of all life from at least two streams that are part of the Danube basin. The music contained in Homo Maleficus is therefore dark, devoid of melodic impulses and filled with a tension that is often vented with violent outbursts black (in the magnificent Dolgunk Végeztével), blunt riffing post metal (Mens Dominium) or doom matrix (A Befalazott) to dissolve in the ambient of the final Kolontar. I can only make amends for having initially underestimated the potential of this good and prolific musician, able to produce an album with a rather deep content, freeing himself from the shoals of an ordinariness that, for someone used to publish on average more than two full lengths per year, would have been understandable. Compliments to the good Nagaarum, of which it remains only to go to rediscover (within the limits of the possible) the consistent discography.

2017 – GrimmDistribution