ALBUM REVIEW: From Nihil – Stömb

It’s hard to remember a time before uber-crushing and disorienting thall riffs overshadowed heavy music, but lately they have been rapidly taking over like a bleak and destructive shelf cloud barreling over brighter land. France’s STÖMB personify this perfectly, bringing to the table a blend of post-djent and progressive metal designed to send shockwaves through the scene with envious intricacy and dazzling heavy groove. After first impressing back in 2015 with their debut The Grey, STÖMB promise to start the new decade by “engaging the new era with a bold concept album, centred around cosmic chaos, nothingness and the insignificance of man within the universe.” 

Which makes for interesting reading, and while listening through their latest offering From Nihil, their carefully selected choice of adjectives begins to make sense. Fronted by artwork that explodes in random colour, they begin to send us into a spinning maelstrom of dense, perplexing music that will leave us tripping over our own attempts to understand. As intelligent as it is pulverising, From Nihil is a cryptic success story; one that scintillates from the very offset.

Leading us headfirst into this chaotic universe is Dimension Zero, a hallucinogenic dive into obscure instrumentation and even darker ideology. STÖMB talk about how the lyrical “obviousness” of other contemporary metal acts has melted away and drifted in favour of what they call “carefully mapped journeys of pure instrumental musicianship and listener interpretation.” And this is largely what we hear on the album. A record built from detailed blueprints that encourage an incredibly unique output.

Void Divine continues this theory with a gradually growing intro that marches forward with CONJURER-esque riffs topped with space-age guitar melody. From here the track starts to soar and embarks on another near seven-minute journey. Djenty arrowhead drums attack in jagged fits, as the track meanders around heavy peaks and hostile recesses. With a total album running time of well over an hour, there is plenty of time for STÖMB to experiment, and the Parisians take their time to squeeze out every drop of zesty perfection. As with any post-metallic opus, diversity is key, and while Extrasensory brings a faint hum of electronica to the table, the band offer just that. Here the album becomes a technical masterclass with nods to the likes of NIGHT VERSES, before spiraling back into the dizzying array of post djent to which we’re now becoming acquainted.

As Ephemeral thunders into being like HUMANITY’S LAST BREATH on opioids, we are treated to yet another mesmerising range of style, and it is easy to begin understanding some of the album’s aforementioned purpose, given the galactic scale. The Hologram is largely a more melodic offering with a more space-rock feel, evoking images with brighter colours than some of the other, darker tracks on the album. Embrace The Nihil and The Threshold are much more djent and tumble enigmatically forward towards Final Transmission, where at the business end of the album STÖMB continue to show that they are far from out of ideas.

As Through The Cosmic Depth and Towards Deliverance conclude affairs with yet more mouthwatering technicality, they wrap up an album that excels in its delivery. A key purpose of progressive metal is to drive the genre forwards, and rather than resting on the laurels of bands gone by, STÖMB do this with ease. From Nihil will likely be a favourite for many throughout the year, and bodes very well for a band verging on greatness.

Rating: 8/10

From Nihil is out now via self-release.

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