Iconoclast

Australian black metal outfit Nazxul have a pretty impressive pedigree within the context of their home country; they share members with such well-regarded cult bands as Drowning the Light, Austere, Pestilential Shadows, and Woods of Desolation, among others. Of course, few people outside Australia (or the black metal underground) have heard of any of those acts, or Nazxul for that matter. So, for the uninitiated, here's the deal: Nazxul play semi-symphonic black metal in the vein of Emperor or Dark Funeral. They haven't got the grand ambitions, or the recording budgets, of Dimmu Borgir or Cradle of Filth — there are no choirs or orchestras here, just guitar, bass, drums and keyboards, but there's a larger-than-life feel to some of their riffs, and the synths actually work well, making the music sound epic rather than seeming to add one more thin, cheesy, faux-horrific sound to the arrangements. At the same time, though, it's surprising that it took five people to make this album. The songs are simple enough in structure, the rhythms straightforward enough, that it could easily be a one-man project like Xasthur, Leviathan, Striborg, or any one of a dozen or more similar "bedroom black metal" names. Ultimately, there are enough good songs ("Symbol of Night and Winter [Ancient Lords]," "Set in Array," "Iconoclast") to make Iconoclast a worthy addition to black metal as a genre, no matter how many or how few people it took to create it.