ALBUM REVIEW: A Sanity Deranged – Nightfell

Formed in Portland, Oregon back in 2012, NIGHTFELL, the brainchild of two of the areas premier underground musicians, Todd Burdette and Tim Call, has gone on to be one of the more impressive acts within the Oregon black metal scene. The pair have produced three excellent albums, but have, since the release of Darkness Evermore back in 2015, remained relatively dormant. Now, just shy of four years since the release of that album, the band are back with their third record, A Sanity Deranged, an album that is noticeably tighter and more focused, and is well worth the extended wait.

No Life Leaves Here kicks A Sanity Deranged off with a bleakly epic sound built upon dense chords, rhythmic drums and thick gutturals, with a few discordant melodies thrown in for good measure. This is a strong, if subdued, way to start the record and sets the tone for the rest of A Sanity Deranged. (As Now) We Must Succumb is a much slower, more doom-laden affair, moving at a funeral pace and making great use of dense guitar motifs to carry the music. The rest of the music builds incredibly well around these powerful guitar hooks, with bellicose gutturals and measured, yet authoritative, drumming serving to make this song sound huge throughout. The song ebbs and flows between a slow, dirge like pace and a much more mid-paced one, with the seismic guitars being the constant focal point, making this long, sprawling track interesting from the first note to the last.

To The Flame, despite being a fairly short piece of music, manages to make the most of the brief time that it has, carving a monolithic path through the record, with ethereal guitars and primal percussion making for a vast, expansive sound that is punctuated by some brilliant, tar thick vocals that do a great job of adding weight to an already robust track. The Swallowing Of Flies, a monolithic and powerful piece of music, sets a funereal pace and really allows the more morose, doomier side of the bands sound come to the fore. The guitars slide around the solid, authoritative drum passages extremely well, giving this song a more fluid and slick feel, whilst still maintaining the thunderous rhythm guitar and bass hooks, which underpin the sound and make many parts of this song sound massive. The leads make use of cleaner, reverb drenched tones, which gives this song a haunting and borderline Gothic edge that really works, and makes the music all the more compelling, and keeps this lengthier offering interesting right up until the final notes.

(Holiness Digested) acts a brief and noisy interlude that breaks A Sanity Deranged up well, leading into the sixth and final track, Sanity Deranged; this last track is a juggernaut of a song, with punishing rhythms and crushing vocals, interlaced with some fantastic, varied lead guitars helping keep this song engaging and engrossing in spite of its length. It’s an incredibly solid way to bring the album to a close, even if it feels as though it goes on for a minute or two long than it really needed to.

A Sanity Deranged is an unerringly dark and haunting album. Although the structure of each song varies somewhat, there’s an ever present atmosphere that cloaks the music and provides a bleakly grandiose edge to everything on here, and it works extremely well. With the music possessing a gloomy, death/doom sound, with a few subtle hints of black metal thrown in for good measure, NIGHTFELL are sure to appeal to fans from across the extreme metal spectrum, and has just enough polish and clarity in its production to make sure that it isn’t off putting to newcomers to the genre. A Sanity Deranged is a great album, arguably the most impressive and eclectic output from NIGHTFELL to date.

Rating: 8/10

A Sanity Deranged is out now via 20 Buck Spin. 

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