Review: THE LOOM OF TIME “NihilReich”

THE LOOM OF TIME “NihilReich”
ATMF

I’m sure that if somebody of you recognize name Aberdeen than connotes it with city where live almost 200.000 and lays on north-east coast of Scotland. It should be very well-known to fans of football coz Aberdeen FC won European Cup Winners Cup and the European Super Cup in 1983. Besides it had also some local (in meaning – Scottish) successes. But well, this time your intuition let you down. This time we’re talking about Aberdeen which’s located in the most populous state of Australia – New South Wales. But Aberdeen, contrary to the city after which it was named, is a small town. Well, we can even say that it’s a scrub where live maybe 1,700 people. I don’t want to be malicious and maybe I’m wrong, but I think that there’s nothing interesting to visit – especially that Aberdeen was found something about 1855.

Anyway, as we noticed many times even in smaller towns there’re Metalheads who fell need of creating their beloved music. That’s also in this case like that. THE LOOM OF TIME is a young band, which was born in 2015. Since the beginning guys play in the same line-up (anyway, I suppose that it’d be very hard to find somebody else not only in town, but also in Hunter Valley area to replace some of musician) what means that they could calmly work. It took them more or less one year to create music and release their debut stuff.

“NihilReich” contains six quite long (the shortest one takes 4.40, the longest – 6.42) songs. Guys say that they play specific mix of Black, Death and Doom Metal which’s with its roots based in Rock and Heavy Metal. Well, to be honest all sub-genres of Metal have its roots in Heavy Metal and, to dig more, Rock. Anyhow, this music is in fact rather hard to define by one term – of course if it’ll not be just word Metal. Yes, Australians play definitely Metal and it’s no doubt about it! All instruments play variously as well. Mathew’s riffs are mostly roomy what of course doesn’t mean that he forgets about right dose of aggression, power, heaviness (in this meaning I can agree that it has something to do with Doom) and even some kind of brutality. It’s also on its way melodic, riffs become from time to time solos or at least “crying” guitar. Steven changes tempo of his drumming quite often and use cymbals as well. Passages are, especially seemingly, easy ones, but that’s good in my opinion. Common character of this music, as well as Metal in general, is like it is and some unnecessary displays could only destroy it. The effect would be that music probably would be technically super-advanced, full of relishes…, but wouldn’t be Metal anymore. It doesn’t mean that we can’t find some relishes here, but they’re delicate and only serve to common character. Bass line which play Brad is also various, but not too much, if you know what I mean. We can hear nice pulsing and even some short “bass’ solo” in one of the songs.

Mathew is here also responsible for vocals. And honestly he does it well. Of course it’s as various as music. Generally he uses several kinds of growling (sometimes it connotes more with Black, sometimes with Death), but fragments where he just sings also aren’t rare. Indeed he’s leader of this band coz it’s him who create music and write lyrics. By the way, as their inspirations they list a lot of bands playing all kinds of Metal (and there’re also some which “say” that not only as well) which we can imagine. And creativity of T.L.O.T is just like that – eclectic. But always in Metal standards and it’s about this more extreme Metal what doesn’t change fact that you should to be rather open-minded for that. But I’ll repeat: that’s Metal and you’ll don’t doubt in that even a second during listening to “NihilReich”!