Shoving you to death down into the grave’s root-lined portal Kristiansand, Norway-based thrashing black/death metal quartet NITHE bury all unworthy corpses with mutant strength and feral defiance on this third and meanest demo tape. ‘Funeral Death‘ brings heated insanity to their work as the pace quickens and demented expression sources a more vicious ancient madness, blackening their horrified late 80’s death-thrash metal muse. A refinement of statement back to core efficacy which still relishes in auld grooves and cemeterial scourge these four songs showcase a band having developed a reasonable ouevre and now wielding it with incorrigible attitude, embodying true morbid underground death which intensifies song-over-song.

Nithe formed circa 2020 by way of current/former members of death/thrash metal bands Damnation and Conflagration having cut their collective teeth into fanged horrors by the time this particular group was readied. Their style was described as “nekro metal” from the start though the general ideation in mind focused on the underground extreme metal of the mid-to-late 80’s via their first demo (‘Cemetery Fever‘, 2021). That’d be the proper place to start if you’re not familiar with the band as it showcases their slower, rotted-out Scandinavian death metal ideal with its punkish roughness applied. It wasn’t exactly steaming with Slaughter or Hellhammer levels of primitivity but the kinda Nihilist-era death demo area about it piqued my interest as I was digging around Bandcamp for unsigned bands that year. No noise, no movements, only silence followed in the years beyond…

Demo number two (‘Night of the Ghoul‘, 2024) brought an early days black/death violence to Nithe‘s attack as the band’d clearly developed their chops, lined up their tempo map a bit more square but kept it ‘old school’ heavy metal in movement (see: title track). There’d always been some ‘Morbid Tales‘ in their shuffle but that second tape revealed that foundation more clearly on longer ~6-7 minute songs which picked up the pace beyond what they’d been after with “Slow Passage” on ‘Cemetery Fever‘. “Ominous Void” even breaks into this ‘Lost Paradise‘ level dissolution near the end, a sort of horror metal break which stood out on the full listen. I dunno if Nithe had been entirely consistent between those first two tapes but they were both rad, wilding shit with the right underground obsessed idealism in hand. That is all we can expect from this third release, another four song demo tape.

The way forward is obsidian, pitch blackness beyond death as Nithe basically iterate and refine their approach within ‘Funeral Death‘, halving the song lengths and cutting quicker to the point with meaner riffs and a thrashing 80’s/early 90’s black metal demeanor to some of their rush. They’d beat me to the punch in mentioning the clangor and viciousness of early Nifelheim (see: opener “Chains of the Abyss”) as well as their adjacency to the ‘Abominations of Desolation‘-era of death metal (“Primordial Ooze (Mother of Woe)” verse riffs). Bringing in some throwback thrash/speed metal movement takes me back to the initial appeal of the opener from Nithe‘s first demo tape but it sounds like they’re on the cusp of the black-thrash side of things here and it might be a worthy change based on this ~15 minute roll through.

The title track, “Funeral Death”, does well to reassure Nithe‘ve still got the old and ugliest sort of swagger to their gig, harmonic-tipped riffs and truly putrid vocals included. From my point of view that title track has all the right attitude and a lot of the band’s personality up front and does well to represent where they’d started and how it’d developed over the course of a handful of years, big grooves and punkish spasticity which allow for the song to blur its movement between plodding ancient death in its first half and rapacious blackened harass in its second. Though I love all the details found on “Primordial Ooze (Mother of Woe)” it was “Funeral Death” that’d stoked me on these folk’s gear going forward. “Poison Wind” is the deepest hit, the grand finale and the peak intensity of a tape which only seemed to get better with each passing song. I don’t know if it fully tops all the shit they pull on the title track but the wailing scream around ~1:14 minutes in and the riff that chops in beyond gets that second thumbs up even quicker.

Tape number three finds Nithe hitting their groove, making exciting enough classic late 80’s/early 90’s underground extreme metal with all the riff action up front and… generally making songs of it. It remains to be seen if they’ll carry the tuneful edge of ex-thrasher extremity into their way forward but at present ‘Funeral Death‘ strikes me as a keen study of an era of feral irreverence as they master the general forms of ancient death metal (and adjacent). For my own taste these fifteen minutes amount to a prime Side A for a larger release in this style, a set of songs that intensify as they pass and find something new to do in each piece. What is missing on my end is just more personality, bigger and louder delivery of these morbid ideas which ensures they stick deeper in mind. A high recommendation.

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