Texas based black/death metal band Nexul has edged away from their more bestial-black/war metal influence sound into a style that is more in line with atmospheric death metal bands like Mitochondrion. They seem to have given up on the thrashy, screeching wails of their debut EP and have leaned towards a formless, reverb-drowned sound. The effect is less than memorable and it lands somewhere between Prosanctus Inferi‘s pushy bestiality and the chugging almost atmospheric death of Chaos Echoes or Grave Miasma. Vocals are my favorite thing about the album. They’re thick, distant and hollow echoing growls that lead the tracks amidst grinding blasts and chugging crawls. The energy is nice and black metal influenced occult death metal can be an exciting thing to behold in the moment. ‘Paradigm of Chaos’ is a solid, quick blast of atmo-death that ends up being somewhat average overall.

For all of the cool sounds Nexul has come up with they haven’t written anything on this record that sticks in my mind. I understand that the scene for this type of death metal is purposefully sort of formless and atmospheric in intent. But I get the feeling I’m listening to what boils down to Napalm Death’s ‘Scum’ with Morpheus Descends production ethos and a few pretty good Finnish death metal riffs. The doom/death riffs mashed up with throttled, frantic kicks make for a nice mix of pacing. Actually that description kinda makes it sound cooler than it is. Nexul’s stuff has changed for the better since their debut EP, it is still blastingly good, yet impossible to remember. At some point I need more than just a great sound to keep music in my playlist. In my eternal struggle to understand and appreciate extreme metal of the future I probably listened to this fifteen times over the last week it still hasn’t given me any reason to come back for more. Perhaps the spell they’ve cast upon me is one of befuddling guile and I’m just spiraling into stupidity. Who could tell?

Average. 3.0/5.0