### Anaal Nathrakh: Vanitas

#### 29/11/12 || Habakuk

In 1986, Kreator released “Pleasure to Kill”, with the clumsily-written Riot of Violence reading: “On a field littered with corpses, stands a lonely flower”.

- Ja, right. Remember that bit? You probably couldn’t understand Ventor to begin with.

In 2012, Anaal Nathrakh’s “Vanitas” has managed to actually convert that diffuse “message” into a pure musical experience, devoid of the childish cheese, yet keeping a decidedly negative vibe. Violence, suffering, pain, horror and overpowering brutality have been recorded. A massive production provides the blunt, electronically enhanced dehumanized grinding machine of Anaal Nathrakh with overpowering dominance. The instruments are set to bring mechanized death, devastate and rape the land.

This sets the backdrop for ethereal melodies seeping through cracks in the soundscape, which never leaves the verge of suffocating them again. Yet even as the proceedings culminate into complete audio mayhem with vocalist V.I.T.R.I.O.L spitting pure bile and sending out screams that mirror sheer agony, at select times a glimmer of humanity can’t be kept from shining through. Even if its only heard in lamentation. And it won’t leave your head again, no matter how devoid of hope the surroundings become.

Is violence the means of catharsis that leads to those moments of beauty, or is it its counterpart? That is something that’s left to your interpretation. Regardless, if you are looking for extreme metal that loses none of its extremity by going beyond soulless, this is your band. Yes, that’s my review.

- Information
- Released: 2012
- Label: Candlelight Records
- Website: Anaal Nathrakh MySpace:http://www.myspace.com/anaalnathrakh
- Band
- Irrumator: guitars, bass, programming
- V.I.T.R.I.O.L.: vocals

- Tracklist
- 01. The blood-dimmed tide
- 02. Forging towards the sunset
- 03. To spite the face
- 04. Todos somos humanos
- 05. In coelo quies, tout finis ici bas
- 06. You can’t save me, so stop fucking trying
- 07. Make glorious the embrace of Saturn
- 08. Feeding the beast
- 09. Of fire, and fucking pigs
- 10. A Metaphor for the dead