Review by Sonny for Nexion - Sundrung (2025)

Another feature whose subject is an act I have no previous knowledge of is this latest album from Icelandic black metallers Nexion. This is only their second full-length despite their decade of existence so, hopefully, they are a band who favour quality over quantity. Now I am a big fan of Icelandic black metal bands who deliver sweeping epics that conjure up images of the mountains, hot springs and ice-fields of their native land, such as Auðn and Árstíðir lífsins, but the initial impression I got from "Sundrung" was of a less epic and more violent record that incorporates significant influence from death metal, especially production-wise. This isn't necessarily the case though, as I think the band still deliver an album of epic black metal, although it is delivered in a different way to the aforementioned acts.

The death metal influence is evident and does beef up the bands sound significantly, yet the twin guitar tremolo riffing and frequent use of harmonised, viking metal-like backing vocals does imbue it with a sense of the epic. This saga-like feeling to the tracks is futher accentuated by the use of a significant layer of atmospheric dissonance, similar in tone to that utilised by the superb Ulcerate, which makes the album feel like an Árstíðir lífsins album recorded by Deathspell Omega (this is a good thing, by the way). So, despite the violence on display, in no small part due to the savagery deployed by vocalist Jósúa Rood, there is still a sense of a striking and epic scope to the instrumentation.

For me at least, this was an album that didn't instantly grab my attention and whose inherent viciousness just sort of washed over me at first, but it is a multi-layered beast and ultimately rewards the listener the more they are willing to invest in it as it is a fairly complex entity hiding in the skin of a visceral and savage beast. While I am a metal fan of fairly simple tastes, it is great to sometimes be presented with an album that challenges initial perceptions and which makes me want to keep returning to it to dig deeper into its labyrinthine depths and "Sundrung" is definitely one such album. The only real downside for me was the drums which felt quite one-dimensional and dulled in delivery, but that is a minor issue in the scheme of things here.