Unearthed this little-known 2011 album from the Utah-based experimental doom death band Nevertanezra, who I only recently learned about after stumbling across some really solid reviews online. The album was self-released, hence its general lack of distribution and visibility, but it's a real hidden gem, offering a middle point between the classic Peaceville-Three era of early UK doom death and the more anguished and stretched-out extremes of funeral doom, with some added idiosyncrasies that give the band their own unique touch. If this had come out on Solitude Productions, all of you slow-motion miserablists would already be all over this stuff. Lead guitarist and founding member Michael Ventura is the focal point of the band, but on NTNR he surrounds himself with a solid group of local diehards along with vocalist Rick McCoy from the cult 1990s Chicago gothic doomdeath outfit Avernus. I'm a massive Avernus fan, they're an acquired taste to be sure, but I've loved much of the stuff they put out, especially early on with those demos. So seeing McCoy's name here was one of the first things that made me perk up and check this out.

NTNR rolls out its processional pace with eerie, minor key guitar harmonies draped over the slow, minimalist march of the rhythm section; that opener "Solace..." operates as a brief instrumental introduction to the album, clouding everything in a haze of ghostly melody, deliberate tempo and a dank, thick, cloying atmosphere of despair. Speaking of which, its "In The Face Of Despair" when the band really drops the hammer, as McCoy's huge, spiteful, guttural death metal belches crawl all over a strange terrain of off-kilter riffs and slightly odd time signature; the whole "funeral doom" vibe is as heavy as I expected, but there's an eccentric touch to the way that the songs are structured, with unusual riffs, spaces of super-minimal quietude, eruptions of jagged, crushing chord progressions, and unpredictable twists and turns. In some ways, the off-kilter doom death of "Despair" and other epics like "Separation Anxiety" (with its bursts of grisly, speedy death metal) and "To Suffocate" remind me of the quirkiness of cult death/doom outfits like Unholy and some of the weirder parts of Esoteric's early albums. McCoy slips some spoken word parts in here and there, but there's just as much instrumental time spent on the album, where that spidery, solemn guitar creeps and winds vine-like around the spare backbeat. And that guitar playing is killer, often shooting and spiraling out into these almost prog-like flurries of expressive, intricate shred at several points during the album; at times, that's paired with vaguely jazzy drumming that creates some pretty unusual combinations. But whenever it shifts into full-on chugging doom-laden crush, it's ferociously heavy. Lurching, raw, occasionally erupting into primitive death metal, other times exploring an odd kind of atmospheric progginess. The arachnid-esque riffery and mid-tempo death metal stomp of "Fading" sticks out as one of the most impressively violent point on the album, sliding from thrashing barbarism and galloping magisterial power into patches of putrescent weirdo prog-death; that one is one of my favorite songs on MTNR, but oh man, the epic, sprawling (in the best way) thirteen-minute closer "To Suffocate" conjures a magnificent fusion of doomed darkness, mysticism, and foul slithering heaviosity. This is where the band gets deepest into some real rocking territory, with long stretches of gloomy, airy groove woven with very cool melodies that, even when those gut-rupturing roars come in, evokes the likes of both Opeth and the more metallic Fields Of The Nephilim stuff. That's a pretty high compliment, coming from these parts. But the latter half is lumbering despair and grueling suffocation that lives up to its name.

For fans of Avernus, yeah, you should definitely check this out. Even though McCoy is the only common factor, the offbeat funeral doom death that billows and bursts from Nevertanezra feel as if it hails from the same deathzone as stuff like Avernus's ...of the Fallen, but with the "gothic" dial turned almost all the way down. Devotees of the early progenators My Dying Bride, Anathma, and Paradise Lost and the likes of Morgion, Novembers Doom and Mistress Of The Dead who have a taste for the unconventional should certainly hear this, as well.