Nightmarer – Hell Interface (Review)

Nightmarer are an international death metal band and this is their latest EP.

Following on from 2023’s Deformity Adrift, Nightmarer have returned with four new tracks of brutal avant-garde death metal. Hell Interface is a 21-minute granite-hard slab of dissonant blades and venomous technicality.

This is not business as usual for Nightmarer though. Hell Interface adopts a harsher, rawer approach to dissonant death metal. The songs are still precise and focused, as you’d expect from Nightmarer, but have an edge to them that feels looser, yet without any loss of fidelity from the band’s core identity. This is an evolved, refined version of Nightmarer, and it works well for them. This is also their first release to feature a new second singer, who complements the original vocalist, adding a dynamic dual vocal assault to Nightmarer’s arsenal. His vocals sit alongside those we’ve come to expect from Nightmarer, enriching the whole experience. Alongside the exit of a guitarist, this is a new version of Nightmarer.

Extinction Burst is an eruption of blackened dissonance, at once surgical and feral. It sounds like something malevolent and lethal has slithered up from the underworld and into our unsuspecting civilisations. The shouts of the song’s title near the end, followed by the understated clean singing, is a strong way to close the track too.

Shame Spiral is more considered and jagged. It breeds atypical atmosphere in the listener’s darkened nightmares, expelling otherworldly offspring across its running time. These infect the day’s thoughts, fostering a deep sense of dread at the coming of the night’s sleep.

There’s a feeling of creeping malice to the appropriately named Crawl of Time. It’s a song that manifests itself out of patience and gloom, steadily stalking its prey with unhurried menace. This is music that’s not interested in your desires, only in satiating your unvoiced need for all things atmospheric, immersive, and richly, deeply darkened. All of these new songs are potent, but this is the most insidious.

The EP ends with the brutally harrowing title track. It seeps from the ashes of Crawl of Time, glacially building power into an unstoppable wall of post-metal riffs and percussion. Eventually, the wall breaks, and out of the rubble surges a deluge of blackened dissonance. Hell Interface never gives in fully to this murderous ocean though, and instead blends islands of subtlety and delicacy around which the torrent of uncommon extremity flows. It’s like a spectral entity born from Isis, Primitive Man, and Gorguts. I mean, that’s hard to beat, right? Right? Is anyone left breathing at this point?

Holy crap, what just happened? Nightmarer have always been a notable band, but Hell Interface feels like a step up into both a deeper individuality and a richer, more textured sense of songwriting quality. I’ll take a full album of this sort of material please, then just inject it straight into me.

Essential listening.