Those who thought that former Cryptospsy vocalist Lord Worm’s new project, Rage Nucléaire was a mere flash in the pan had better think again. Lord Worm has returned two years after his first real, post Cryptopsy foray with yet another hate fueled, apocalyptic, industrialized slab of unrelenting black metal, and it’s just as solid and unforgiving as the debut.

If anything Lord Worm and Co (including current Marduk drummer Fredrik Widigs to give you some idea of the band’s percussive leanings) are not very subtle. With albums named Unrelenting Fucking Hatred and Black Storm of Violence, along with the cover art of burnt out apocalyptic futures or mushroom clouds, so you know what you are getting. And those that feel modern black metal has been too watered down or tainted with too many gazey or other elements and lost some of it’s edge, Rage Nucléaire is here to give it some teeth again (albeit the creepy, metal T-100 styled ones).

Again rendered with a industrialized, clinical and calculated guitar tone and Lord Worm’s fever pitched shrieks, Black Storm of Violence forsakes all subtlety in favor of pure caustic hyper speed blasting. There are shades of Anaal Nathrakh‘s earlier ‘necro’ sound, but with more polish and all sorts of other Scandinavian black metal influences from Dark Funeral and Zyklon to Marduk and Myrkskog– and the common theme is speed, albeit crushed underfoot in an ash and debris strewn post apocalyptic filter.

The thing is, for all the mechanical, bristling furor- of which there is plenty, there is, as with the debut some crafty melodies hovering under the clinical assault. The likes of “Le Grand de Vivre”  and “Revel in Bones” and the closing title track, while encased in Lord Worm’s debilitating vocal attack and precise robotic percussive display have a real sense of melody lurking within. Not post-y or gazey warbling melodies, but harsh and razor sharp ones as displayed by some of the bands named above, that make a clean, painless but, bur sear with a white hot glow and odor of burnt flesh as well.

But those melodies are still mired in some truly uncompromising, robotic blackened fury and  payloads of volatile riffage as heard on opener “Annihilation Frenzy”, “Ritual Murder (And Its Attendant Blessings)” and the utterly frenzied “A Sino-American Chainsaw War”. Even when the band does slow down a tad, as say parts of “The Deadfall Tryptich” or “Goddess of Filth” (which features a rare atmospheric break)  it’s a stern, militant, Teutonic no nonsense march to incite world domination. 

And Lord Worm is the spokesperson.

[Visit the band's website]

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