Old Nick - The Night of the Ambush and the Pillage by the Queen Ann Styl'd Furniture, Animated by One of the Dozen or So Spells That Thee Eastern Vampyre Has Studied (2020)^{Release ID: 24451}

The Penmanship of Permanence, Scrawled With the Colour of Imperialist Rome Within Thee 97rd Page of Melodious Splendour

I wasn't really sure what to think when I saw this album title flash by as I scrolled through the pages and pages of Metal albums I had missed this year. One thing was for certain; I just had to listen to it. Much to my surprise, this might be one of the most charming Black Metal releases to come out of 2020. With a name like The Night of the Ambush and the Pillage by the Queen Ann Styl'd Furniture, Animated by One of the Dozen or So Spells That Thee Eastern Vampyre Has Studied I wasn't expecting too serious of a project from the mysterious Old Nick, and while I was right to assume that, I can't lie and say this isn't some genuine lo-fi Black Metal. Old Nick have come out of nowhere in 2020, releasing a ton of demos and EP's starting in the spring of 2020 and eventually releasing their first full album Forest of Grief at the end of April. Forest of Grief sets up many of the elements shown on this release, but the feel and production is completely different, with the latter going for an extremely pushed back lo-fi Black Metal experience with some killer riffs and cool dungeon synth integration. While I enjoyed Forest of Grief their second album, released about 6 months later is...something else entirely.

The Night of the Ambush... is inconsiderately loud in comparison to Forest of Grief and much, much stranger. Old Nick's first album planted itself firmly within normal lo-fi Black Metal worship, but this album bursts out of its confines and runs completely wild. Honestly, I sometimes don't even know what's happening in some of these tracks. And that's what makes it pretty fantastic. The Dungeon Synth element is extremely pronounced in this one compared to Forest of Grief, creating a bizarre but sinister Victorian-era impression that I can't say I've heard before. It creates such a demented contrast since most of these effects are happy and triumphant sounding. All kinds of different distorted synths, strings, what I can only imagine is some kind of harpsichord, and an assortment of other noises that I can't even discern come out of nowhere to push their own melodies on top of the ripping Black Metal riffs behind them. The riffing is satisfyingly low quality and aggressive and, somehow, it feels right at home beside all the crazy effects happening all around it. The drums carry on the standard Black Metal blast beat but never overdo it, helping to somehow keep everything grounded. The riff writing is also pretty fantastic, even if it may be a bit simple. These are some of the grimmest and most blistering lo-fi Black Metal riffs I've heard in quite some time, even when they're being played behind whatever strange waltz of instruments decides to pop up. The vocals also sit successfully right in the middle of the mix, filling in any possible empty spaces with reverbed howls that sound suitably painful.

It's just incredible how flat out strange this album is. One moment there's an intense Black Metal riff taking over the stage, the next moment a marching band passes through while the vocalist is still howling away in the background. The whole album is just an unhinged mess of insane things happening in some sort of sequence that eventually just ends, leaving the listener in the dust trying to make heads or tails of what just happened. After the initial shock wore off, I came back to this album impressed with how well this idea was executed compared to Forest of Grief, with this album having way more variety in a more concise but crazy package. It also makes me happy that bands are still trying to work within the Dungeon Synth angle of Black Metal because, for some reason, it works incredibly well when done right. Old Nick have burst into the scene with an incredible amount of lo-fi content that feels astonishingly fresh given its inherently dated nature. Plus, it's just a hell of a lot of fun.