Avant-death trio Nightmarer offer a terrifying vision of things to come

Nightmarer promo pic 2018, by Justina Villanueva
(Image credit: Justina Villanueva)

If you ever felt that djent latched itself onto Meshuggah’s dimension-hopping groove only to utterly miss the point, making it soft and cuddly to the point where it’s now a byword for music that sounds like a school programming intermission soundtrack, then help is at hand.

Formed by former members of Gigan, The Ocean and War From A Harlot’s Mouth, Florida’s Nightmarer appear to be undergoing a slo-mo warp-spasm induced by splicing some of the Swedes’ DNA into their sound. But rather than try to make it all… human and such, they’ve dragged it into abyssal, which-way-is-up realms further along the extreme end of the sonic spectrum, approaching the event horizon where the laws of physics go a bit skew-whiff and Deathspell Omega are kitting out their rehearsal room.

Following their 2016, aptly titled debut EP, Chasm, the three-piece have reconfigured themselves once more and are about to stretch your synapses to breaking point with their first full-length, Cacophony Of Terror, due to emerge from the Season Of Mist mothership on March 23.

Fear greatly, for we’ve caught the first radiation blast in the disconcerting yet enlightening form of Skinner – four and a half minutes of death metal dissonance whose morbid focus clearly wants to take on Sauron in a staring contest, and would probably win.

“”Our premiere track,” state the band themselves, “is the first song that we wrote for this album and it offers a mere glimpse into the abyss which is Cacophony Of Terror. This record tells a story of paranoia and self-destruction with no light at the end of the tunnel. Skinner weighs heavy in bleak hopelessness, but it’s only a prelude of things far worse to come…”

So without further ado, gird your bowels, recall those videos where Earth is is compared to increasingly more vast planets, stars and solar systems, and tremor before the might that is Skinner below!

Visit Nightmarer’s Facebook page here

And pre-order Cacophony Of Terror here!

Jonathan Selzer

Having freelanced regularly for the Melody Maker and Kerrang!, and edited the extreme metal monthly, Terrorizer, for seven years, Jonathan is now the overseer of all the album and live reviews in Metal Hammer. Bemoans his obsolete superpower of being invisible to Routemaster bus conductors, finds men without sideburns slightly circumspect, and thinks songs that aren’t about Satan, swords or witches are a bit silly.