Nehëmah - Light Of A Dead Star

Nehemah are part of the established french scene and have been around since the early nineties. In 1995 they released the demo Light Of A Dead Star, which featured roughly everything present on this full length. The official debut album was then released 7 years later. If anyone wants an idea of what the french scene is capable of then continue reading. I'm fortunate enough to have seen these guys live at UTBS fest and together with Urfaust they were without a doubt the best bands of the entire weekend.

Nehemah are typical french black metal. This mysterious touch surrounds their music and was also present during their performance. They incorporate keyboards very tastefully in their sound, without going to far. This entire atmosphere is even further enhanced by some sections where the bass guitar shines. The guitar tone they use is incredibly vile and certainly one of the most vicious I have had the pleasure of hearing. Production-wise everything is almost perfect, raw, but not to the extent where some instruments simply become inaudible. A good variation is provided with the difference in paste, some songs have a slower approach to them, while others just furiously and unrelentlessly blast away like the opener Light Of A Dead Star. Nehemah are at their best when they incorporate both the slower as well as the faster aspects of their music in one song; slowly building-up to a climax that usually ends up with devestating blast beats blowing your brains out. Nehemah mostly excel at producing some eerie riffs that linger somewhere in mid-air and keep repeating itself. For some it might be a little repetitive, but that's the strongest aspect about this album. The constant repetition of certain riffs allows the music to fully develop and obtain a rich texture. At times the distortion makes way for a cleanly played guitar riff, such as during the intro of Nehëmah In Vulva Infernum, after which an incredibly thunderous, chaotic riff is played which immediately reminded me of the same memorable passage at the beginning of the song Akyr Zaman by Darkestrah. Definitely an album highlight.

Nehemah have also added some clear vocal lines to Light Of A Dead Star, they only appear twice and rather briefly. For a lot of black metal bands clear vocals are "not done", because they are either totally misplaced and just there for the sake of them being there or the band in question is too ambitious and uses the vocals constantly turning an entire album into a complete travesty, but luckily here we won't find the type of homosexual excesses you would find on an Agalloch album. No, the cleanly sung lines here are epic and incredibly gloomy. Nehemah are a band that are firmly rooted in the french scene and with Light Of A Dead Star they continue to help establish France as one of the best black metal countries out there.

Nehëmah - Light Of A Dead Star