Seven Times Seven

O_O / wow / ehhh?


Initial reactions to this monument to pure chaos. The only other album I can think of that confused me this much is Gorguts' 'Obscura'. Yeah, Seven Times Seven is *that* hard to get a grip on. Just imagine Immolation injected the the speed and ferocity of Krisiun, but much more technical and with a twist of mesopotamian thematics. Erm....yeah.

Nefas are playing extremely brutal and what appears to be extremely complicated death metal; the song structures are amorphous and narrative but seem much more chaotic than linearity would imply....latter day Cryptopsy would be a good example, but Nefas aren't even that catchy. Combined with the chunky, fast and intricate riffing is a standardized death growl and a satisfying underpinned pace of fast double bass; the complex rhythm work being handled mostly by the snare and cymbals which judder and fill-out with almost spastic-like eccentricity. Unfortunately, as appealing (if confusing) as each individual track on this album is, the entirety suffers terribly from sameness syndrome. With an almost total lack of melodic riffs and very few leads (there are one or two good ones, eg, Sorceror of Marib Desert), combined with the extremely dense and chaotic arrangements, the album basically blurs into one long song, no matter how hard you try and concentrate on it. I've tried! The mesopotamian theme is explored well in the lyrics, but have no real bearing on the music apart from two brief atmospheric interludes and the aforementioned two or three guitar leads.......so there's a kind of dichotomy between the music and the lyrics/artwork which adds even more confusion to the mix.

Its a shame these things inevitably bear against Nefas, because they obviously play with excessive skill and conviction, and for that they don't really fail, but don't come to this album expecting an easy ride; you're not going to get it.