Review: Black Tongue - Nadir

Black Tongue - Nadir

Black Tongue have had a bit of a rough go. Starting out playing deathcore certainly didn’t set them in the best spot, but over the course of their career they managed to make the most of it through stylistic changes that resulted in the surprisingly adequate The Unconquerable Dark. They even found themselves on a major metal label for that release, their debut full-length. And that’s when they hit their real bad run of luck.

For reasons still unknown, the marriage of Black Tongue and Century Media did not seem to work in either parties’ favour. It could be the label didn’t believe in them, as evidenced by just how damn difficult it was to find their CD for sale anywhere, even Amazon. It could be the band didn’t realize the amount of legwork a band has to do even when on a sizeable label, or perhaps fell into an advance trap that a contemporary death metal album could never pay back. Whatever the case, CM left the band to starve to death and their career dwindled into obscure non-existence, incredibly embittered and despising the music industry.

This brings us to Nadir. Going from the triumph and happiness of being signed to a major metal label for your debut album to being dropped and forgotten like unwanted trash can really bring a person to their knees. As was the case with the band trying to pick up the pieces falling Unconquerable Dark, feeling they were at the absolute rock bottom of their career and lives, in a terrible depression of failure and feeling utterly lost. They no longer found passion or joy in playing and writing music. All signs were pointing towards giving up on their dreams entirely and settling for something more mundane. But instead, they took that bitterness, anger, depression, and absolute hopelessness, struck out once again on their own with a DIY and underground attitude that had made music fun and worthwhile to begin with, and channeled it into an absolutely seething pit of darkness and despair.

Nadir means the absolute lowest point of something. The darkest, deepest, fathoms, be it in the form of a band hitting rock bottom, a mind sinking into a nihilistic depression, the most sinister and unforgivable act a person can do, or the very depths of the earth’s inky crevices, kissing the gates of hell. This album was birthed from the first, and deals at length with the other three, told through a story of what lies beyond the end of life. Be forewarned, this is a full on tale that I will do my best to now interpret. If you want a simple review, or don’t like speculations which may contain spoilers, it’s best to skip the next big chunk.

You are dead. And there is indeed an afterlife. But what greets you isn’t the shiny gates of paradise. Instead you spy in the distance across an abyssal plain of limbo a dark cathedral. Before you stretches a line of all the other recently-departed pitiful souls waiting to be judged. You are forced to stand in horror as each queuer approaches the judge within, every terrible thing they’ve ever thought or done recounted in full and their damnation spelt out for all to witness. Those who have led a good natured life are given the key to the gates of paradise where they may finally rest their weary soul. Those who know they will find no such peace when they meet their judgment sink to their knees and weep. A sinner receives his sentence, a deep, dark bell tolls, and they hear the dreaded words: “Follow me down”. You have all heard the tortured screams, felt the rumble of Styx flowing somewhere beneath your feet, witnessed a lake full of souls submerged in boiling urine whilst unable to drown, and shuddered as a collection of damned souls is beaten by a dark tormentor, bellowing at them, “Your pathetic shells will crack. I want you all to suffer”. Now you feel alone in the corridor as you wait your turn before the final door. The hall and time itself both seem to stretch into an infinite void and the time you wait, already knowing your fate, has become a hell unto itself. You can no longer tell how long you have been there, there is only waiting and fear. You occasionally glimpse a glimmer of light in the dark, but just as quick as you consider there may be hope for you yet, you suddenly feel the eyes. The eyes that have always been watching. Since the moment you arrived, countless eyes have bored their way into your flesh, watching your every move. Your fellow dead have been watching you, assuming the worst of you, and hidden spirits judge you, already knowing what you have done on earth. You feel their eyes even in your memories as you recount all your misdeeds, each terrible secret now accompanied by a hidden audience. Every step you’ve taken, every word you’ve written, every moment of your life, a shadow hung over you watching with eyes unclosing. Your skin crawls beneath this now-remembered presence.

And now it is your turn at last. Your crimes are numbered, but you are not told of your official judgment. You suspect the worst, begging and pleading with the judge, hoping there has been a mistake even while knowing you are likely damned for eternity. Your feet are shackled to a heavy weight as you are moved on for processing, slowly trudging to an infinite grey horizon. As you feel the weight of your endless, gruelling task, you recognize you were never a person, but an empty void of a human now receiving exactly what you deserve. You dare to look to your surroundings instead of straight ahead at your goal and find everywhere you look, grotesque figures have been contorted and ripped apart by chains. Now the silence which you thought so terrible before is replaced with the even worse din of their screams, retching coughs, and rattling bonds. Along your path you are witness the Temple of Smoke where the tormented asphyxiate in an attempt to distract from their torture. They also pray before the Altar of Needles, attempting self-mutilation to forget their broken bodies. You carry on along the road which leads to the Garden of Death. You collapse before the tombstone of the person you loved most in life, trace your fingers upon their grave as you witness their shade waiting across an eternally still lake you cannot cross. You feel the reaper behind you and beg to be taken to a different doom. Then you see it, a raft upon the lake, and you pray that the next passage upon it is meant for you, to take you anywhere but the endless nothing of limbo. There is no such indication, and the raft begins to leave. You fight with all your strength against your bonds, muscles tearing open, bones splintering and ripping through your skin. You collapse and beg death to carry you to the lake. By some divine grace, you are placed on the raft and sail into darkness.

You awake and cannot believe your eyes. Before you lies the gate of paradise. You served your sentence in limbo and attained the glory of heaven. Yet as you try to move, you realize your body is still broken, your muscles and bones useless. Feebly, you crawl to the gates and push against them, but they will not budge. You scream for the gates to open, but no one hears your cries. You beat your limbs against the fence and only serve to further cripple yourself.

You are treated to your final and permanent hell: isolated and broken before the dwelling place of god with no chance to enter the kingdom and no way to leave. As you were in life, shunning all those who tried to love or know you, you are damned to be forever alone. Even the ceaselessly watching eyes have removed their presence. Finally, you feel the eyes of god himself close against you, the light replaced by endless dark. All you have left is the memory of your death, and that final fleeting kiss of the divine which pulled your soul from a husk hanging by a noose in some dark room.

THAT is Nadir. If it sounds dark and depressing, that’s an understatement. This is perhaps the bleakest album I’ve ever heard. But what good would that be if the music couldn’t cut it? This is where Black Tongue really surprises, as they’ve somehow created a sonic statement to perfectly match the tale they’ve woven. On The Unconquerable Dark, they had already begun to eschew the more pedestrian and boring cliches of deathcore and incorporate a unique blend of their old beatdown brutality with cavernous doom metal and searing black metal. This formula is essentially perfected on Nadir with no traces of generic -core to be found, just slow sludgy death metal grooves. The enormous breakdowns no longer resemble a time in the music for kids to mosh and throw down to, but rather a moment where everything freezes in a yawning void of echoing timeless horror. And the blackened fast bits flay the skin of those who look upon them with scathing nihilism. An advisory if you happen to use delicate or sensitive headphones/ speakers - this album has some very abrasive and very low bass register notes that could break anything not built to handle stress. That being said, I absolutely recommend listening to this album on the most detailed set up you have at your disposal, preferably in a quiet and isolated environment. The echoing reverb and subtle details hidden in the album’s quietest moments plunge you straight into the void they illustrate just as well as the towering and thunderous riffs do.

I would recommend to experience this with the above set-up configuration, and in a single sitting. The individual tracks themselves, while impressive, complement each other better than what they can offer you on their own, and beg to lead you down the path of limbo in a continuous telling.

Let Black Tongue show you your doom as you contemplate your own life’s karmic balance. 

Follow them down.