Nachtmystium - Resilient

The context surrounding this new four-track Nachtmystium EP is mostly unfortunate and marred in the controversies, misfortunes, and manipulations of the band’s frontman, Blake Judd. Besides coming off a loss back in 2014 with the justifiably panned The World We Left Behind, the murky waters surrounding Judd’s ongoing battle with drug addiction tying into his shady business practices with his Ascension Monuments have overshadowed the glory of albums like Silencing Machine and Assassins: Black Meddle, Pt. 1 and soiled Nachtmystium’s legacy over the past few years. All this is to say that the band certainly had a lot of pressure on them going into this release, and even though it’s a small one, it still felt like there was a lot riding on it.
Judd clearly understood the weight of this album’s impact and what it could potentially do for or to his career, and on Resilient, he chooses to confront his demons head-on. The ambient synth-led opening track features an eerie and fittingly symbolic samples from Darren Aronofsky’s addiction-themed Requiem for a Dream, leading into the similarly goth synth leads of the subsequent title track, which finds Judd taking a gruesome look in the mirror and coming to conclusions of being a “resilient survivor, too selfish to die” amid the misty synthesizer hums and atmospheric guitar leads. It’s a decent gothic black metal dirge that finds the band recapturing at least some of that potency and uniqueness they completely sacrificed on The World We Left Behind.
The third track, “Silver Lanterns”, ups the speed of the drums a bit and brings some brighter, yet still ominous, guitar work to the table, as well as synthesized choir vocal hums over the slightly longer course of its arc. A spoken passage by Judd during the bridge recounting his hospitalization due to overdose makes the morose instrumental being built up all the more haunting.
The patiently building closing track, “Desert Illumination”, is a bit of a bore during the first few minutes of meandering moaning and clean guitar droning, but when the song really kicks in, it makes great use of an indulgently lengthy progression of atmospheric tremolo-picking that provides a fabulously elevating finish to the record.
It’s an adequate few tracks to dust off the irons and get Nachtmystium back on track. But the band are going to have to do a lot more to recapture their former glory, and with an entirely new line-up behind Blake Judd though, it’s hard to say what success this new incarnation of Nachtmystium can achieve. They are off on the right foot however, and I think tackling a shorter project like this one to get the ball rolling before trying to knock out a whole album was a smart idea, especially given how mild of a return to form this EP is. Hopefully Judd’s struggles with drugs and the fallout that spilled over into his business are behind him, and hopefully the musicians who have placed their faith in him and invested themselves into Nachtmystium can help bring about a healthy second act of this band.

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