Urban Cancer

Like many of their other French-Canadian brethren, Nefastus Dies prefers their music to take place mostly at break-neck speeds, and smite you with a punishing attack.

This beating takes it’s form in heavily influenced 2nd-wave Norwegian black metal, which does include keyboards. The influences are early and raw, and this holds closer to when Emperor started experimenting with keyboards rather than symphonic bands such as Dimmu Borgir and Cradle Of Filth. The production is crystal clear, which really allows those cold black metal guitars to come out and bite, with the vocals coming off equally as tortured. The drumming during the long songs mostly consists of blast beats and Smith blasts, and while that concept could wear the listener down, there’s so much atmosphere and torment that the length of the songs really work into the bands favour.

Could this band perhaps help to introduce the public to the rising Quebec black metal scene? That I’m not sure about, however, the production levels and wall drums do suggest that Nefastus Dies is ready to go out and annihilate the unsuspecting on tour.

Originally posted at www.waytooloud.com

Nefastus Dies plays a pretty interesting brand of black metal, something not too orthodox. With a clean production, occasional inhale vocals, somewhat complex material and absolutely nothing to do with Satan, Nefastus Dies straddles the boarder between melodic death and black metal.


The music itself is superb. Each instrument works perfectly with another to create a catchy, melodic, brutal and somewhat technical sound. The vocals range from deep death metal growls, to inhales, to ravenous black metal screeches. The vocals are excellent and a nice change of pace from your typical black metal vocals. The guitars play primarily melodic and catchy tremolo picked sections which are phenomenal. Along with the guitars, the keyboards provide the typical symphonic melody role. Thankfully the keyboards are used in an extremely wise fashion, nothing even close to Dimmu Borgir or Limbonic Art , but more like Epheles; they're just there to provide simple and background melodies. The drums are extremely technical and impressive. They're full of complex fills, nice little accents and impressive speed.


Urban Cancer is a great album, it is highly recommended for open minded black metal fans who appreciate melody and varied vocals. Stand out tracks are Primal Chaos Layers ( listen to that breakdown at 2:32, fucking brilliant!) and None of the Above. This album was a really nice surprise, the best way i can describe it is if Neuraxis and At the Gates listened to way too much black metal and created their own black metal band. This is not for black metal purists.