Review by Saxy S for Groza - Nadir (2024)

The two main comparison points that I had going into this third studio album from the German black metal project, Groza, were Mgla and Gaerea. I was a little skeptical at first since Mgla are just one of those bands that I could never get into. But Gaerea have impressed me with their recent output in recent years. I've seen Nadir in my recommended folder for quite some time now and finally found some time to give it a couple of spins. And the result was nothing short of fantastic!

Let's get one thing out of the way quickly: if you're expecting Nadir to be like the first two Groza albums, you might be letdown. The Mgla influence of the past has been mostly left behind in favour of more progressive/atmospheric black metal tendencies. What I really like about Nadir over Gaerea's Coma, also from 2024, is how it does not modulate into more death metal trends. That may seem hypocritical on my part since I generally praised Coma for its crossover appeal, but I would also argue that not every album needs to be a musical grab bag (i.e. Spirtibox's Eternal Blue, anything by Sleep Token) to be successful; sometimes it just takes a solid refinement of one sound and Groza nail it here. 

And that comes through in the production. Nadir does not beat around the bush with its soundscape. It features guitars, blast beat percussion and black metal screams that are performed with precision and diction. The timbre of the vocals actually reminded me a lot of Svalbard's Serena Cherry so that is a plus for P.G. right out of the gate. The guitar is performed beautifully and the tremolo guitar leads are gorgeous; the mix uses just the right amount of reverb to make it sound cold and isolating, but not so much as if you're drowning in the ocean. The percussion can be relentless at times and only adds to the oppressive atmosphere of this record. The bass on this album is rather inconsistent though. Sometimes it can be really powerful, but others it just kind of disappears underneath a wall-of-sound. I have a pretty good feeling (although my understanding of mixing is quite limited) that devaluing the kick drum during the fast, double kick passages would have rectified this.

Nadir is exactly the kind of album that I wish for. Once a band who were just looking to get recognized, they mimicked a very popular black metal sound and received some praise. Once they reached a certain level of notoriety, they take that influences sound and mutate it into something that is still very much recognizable, but quite a way off the beaten path. Definitely a band I will return to in the future, as well as a band that I think even the staunchest of black metal traditionalists will enjoy.

Best Songs: Asbest, Dysthymian Dreams, Equal. Silent. Cold, Deluge