Njiqahdda S Songs Are Written and Sung in A Unique Language The Two Nameless Members Have

UGH.
Please excuse the lack of updates, the final exams are once again upon me and every
professor down at the uni is busy finding new ways of raping my sweet butt cheeks. As a direct
result of that, listening to dumb metal has taken a back seat to studying my ass off with deadmau5
as background music. That Cattle Decap album is seriously the only metal I listened to during the
last week or so, which bums me out. Whatever.
I’m now taking a break to sneak in a post about a band you may not have heard of, lovingly
called Njiqahdda. They’re an atmospheric/psychedelic/ambient post-black metal duo from the US
and they play some of the most soothing black metal I’ve ever heard. You won’t find any of the
genre’s usual staples here (i.e. lyrics about goats, praising Satan, killing priests, wearing gauntlets
and corpsepaint), the band instead dealing with nature, astral projection, meditation, spiritualism,
becoming one with the Universe and things like that. I suppose the easiest way to compare them is
with Wolves in the Throne Room, but the music is much more quiet and subdued, even though
there are plenty of harsh, filtered vocals and pounding drumming to be heard. All their songs have a
hypnotic quality to them, employing various chanting vocals and repetitive patterns to convey a
sense of grandeur and nothingness. It’s like the soundtrack to wandering across an infinite barren
landscape or finding yourself stranded on a distant planet.
Njiqahdda‘s songs are written and sung in a unique language the two nameless members have
developed themselves, which is why you’re seeing all these weird words that apparently don’t mean
anything. Add to this the unconventional cover art – check out the artwork for the Nil Vaaartului Nji
EP, it’s the polar opposite of a black metal cover – and the truckload of various albums, singles and
EPs these guys put out every year and your hipster alert should be flashing red, telling you to steer
clear of this. I’m going to ask you to go against your better judgment and give Njiqahdda a listen
anyway. You might be surprised to find it’s pretty damn good.
Or at the very least, it works well as background music for when you have to stay up all night
studying for some shitty exam that comes only a day after the last shitty exam. Fuck those
dickheads.
’ve never really paid close attention to Cattle Decapitation before, even though they’re a long-
running deathgrind outfit with quite a few albums under their belts. Sure, I always commended them
for their social message – their songs mostly speak against the consumption of animals and
environmental and animal abuse – even though I don’t share their eating habits (all the band’s
members are vegetarian, so they really practice what they preach). But I didn’t really have my radar
on for their music, so it all passed right by me, except for a few songs off The Harvest Floor.
Their 2012 record, however, entitled Monolith of Inhumanity, has been gathering quite a bit of
hype prior to launch, with the band slowly trickling away songs from the album and various studio
reports covering the recording process. Like every good sheep, I also fell prey to the buzz – hence
these lines of text.
Things are different on Monolith of Inhumanity, though, starting with the cover art, which no
longer depicts cows and slaughterhouses, but a wonderfully gruesome pack of cannibalistic apes,
with a disfigured half-man half-primate up front and a 2011: A Space Odyssey-style monolith in the
background. It’s an artwork that instantly draws the eye and compels you to check out the music.
And boy, you’re in for a treat! From start to finish, this album is an extreme crash course in
everything great deathgrind should be. All the songs are varied, well-structured, insane hurricanes of
1
chainsaw guitar riffs, super tight drumming and some of the best vocals in the biz, courtesy of
vocalist Travis Ryan. This guy really is the icing on this cake, as his vocals run the whole range
from ultra low gutturals to pissed off, thrash metal barks to high-pitched, spine-chilling shrieks.
There’s a definite catchiness on this album too, as the band chose to incorporate lots of sing-along
choruses on songs like The Carbon Stampede and A Living, Breathing Piece of Defecating Meat.
Also worth mentioning are the artist cameos, as the album features guest vocals by Devourment‘s
Mike Majewski, Cephalic Carnage vocalist Lenard Leal and the Cephalic Carnage Community
Men’s Choir.
I haven’t really had a chance to listen to Monolith of Inhumanity as much as I would have liked,
but I’m already digging it a lot and it’ll probably make its way to my 2012 best-of list. There’s just
so much to be excited about here. Cattle Decapitation have really outdone themselves on their
latest album and have proven that they can easily break the mold and present us with something new
and different. And I love it. If you don’t love it, you should feel bad because you’re a bad person.
Also, Travis Ryan seems like a pretty sweet dude.

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UGH.

Also, Travis Ryan seems like a pretty sweet dude.

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