Nubivagant - The Blame Dagger - CASS

Label: Signal Rex

Nubivagant's highly anticipated third album, The Blame Dagger, on tape.

Black metal both traditional and transcendental - such is the mark of Nubivagant. Omega, the multi-instrumentalist behind the band, possesses the collective experience of over three decades in the black metal scene; he concurrently helms the well-respected Darvaza and plays drums Frostmoon Eclipse and Chaos Invocation, among many others in the past. However, with Nubivagant does he walk a unique path that takes a cleaner-toned timbre both in strings and voice, resulting in two equally awe-inspiring albums, 2020's Roaring Eye and 2022's The Wheel and the Universe. Once again under the auspices of Amor Fati, Omega delivers a new treatise on hypnotic sonic levitation: Nubivagant's The Blame Dagger.

The band's first two records exhibited textures that could be qualified as calming, if not without a certain sturm und drang one finds when contemplating the ocean. Here on The Blame Dagger, Nubivagant bares open his soul once again, but in a manner much darker, both on the surface and well below it, and altogether in rougher fashion. One could call the songwriting "minimal is maximal" or simply primitive, but the sum effect is psychedelic to the extreme: one (BIG) idea is employed and then pushed further and further with subtle twists of nuance, the repetition resulting in mesmerizing movement that somehow evaporates time. Compared to its two predecessors, the tones utilized here seethe with tension and unease, if not somehow strangely soothing due to that ever-enveloping schematic; dirt and grit still coat everything, more so than ever. Likewise is Omega's voice smoother yet darker, sounding less like a lost deathrock spectre of the first two LPs and more like an immortal prophet of doom perched upon a cliff overlooking said sea. Some might even qualify that as "doom" in terms of the metal subgenre, and they would not be totally incorrect; still, Omega's wordplay and tastefully curious note choices put Nubivagant further into their own unique category.

(Amor Fati Productions)