Nibiru
Salbrox

I wrote about Nibiru a few years ago and wasn’t too impressed by what the Italians had to offer back then. Now they have changed label to Ritual Productions and come up with this new album they call Salbrox, and at least it looks better than the previous album. “Salbrox means Sulfur in the Enochian language of which the band profess, the rite is a cataclysmic psychic journey of visionary magick, elemental prophecies and esoteric supernormality. Tribal percussion, evocative mantras and hypnotic drones imbued with the band’s amalgamation of black metal, doom metal and psychedelic textures formulates a fascinating, idiosyncratic art.” That is something I copy-pasted from the press material, that all sounds exciting but is it really?

Musically it can probably be described as sludge, slow moving extremish metal with a tempo that is more akin to glacial speed than race car speed. The vocals are raspy and growly; according to the press material they are spectre summoning and things like that. It all sounds exciting on paper but it is a slow moving process, without variation and with a playing time that feels like eons rather than minutes. The soundscapes are sludgy and atmospheric, or at least they try to be. I am not too impressed with the soundscapes either, and did I mention that the vocalist is quite poor? Well, he is.

It is not a good album this one, it is really boring with slow songs, poor sounds, dreary vocals and no sense of originality. Nibiru is generally used in astronomic circuits or science fiction, this Italian band doesn’t really seem like anything like that just darkish and dull. Perhaps you will see it differently and like it if you are a fan of what the band has done before, but I am not sure that you are quite numerous so for the general public it isn’t a very interesting album. It is one that is best to ignore. I have a hard time seeing the point of an album like this one, it just has me asking why. Why would anyone make an album like this and why would anyone release it? The answer isn’t very obvious to me.

I recommend that you avoid this album, it isn’t exciting or interesting and I have been rather bored listening through it many times. If you like Nibiru’s earlier work you will probably disagree with all I just wrote and find this one rather good, but those of you are few and far between so the safe bet is to look for something else. So now I am letting this go away in a puff of smoke and look for something a little bit more interesting.

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