Transmigration of Consciousness

To be honest I was never a huge fan of Nomad. I have been familiar with their releases since their early days and none of them have really kicked my ass.

This time things are a little different. I just listened to this album for the fourth time and every time I listen to it I like it more and more. Each time I spin this record I find more little details that somehow I had missed when I was listening to it before. Maybe it is less demonic and less devilish than their three older albums, but for sure it is still mostly fast and brutal death metal.

It is nice to see how this band made its progress over the years – when I recall the stuff from their demo 1996 - “Disorder” (At that time I was in touch with Nomad's ex-vocalist Christian from whom I got their debut tape) and compare it with “The Independence of Observation Choice” the band made a huge step forward! I know that on this album they re-recorded some stuff from this very first demo but it is way more mature and professional – doesn’t even sound close to the stuff from the demo. They became another top-quality death metal band and when you listen to this album you have to admit that it is not any weaker or worse than the late albums of Immolation, Malevolent Creation, Sinister, or Polish bands like Trauma, Vader, Hate or Behemoth. I recommend this album to those who are interested in the aforementioned names. But hey! Don’t get me wrong – Nomad doesn’t copy any of those bands – I just feel like their stuff is in the same style – fast, complicated, melodic, brutal, technical, full of little interesting details, changes of tempo, different palette of riffs, etc.

In short: What we are dealing with here is an intelligent and well done album! Nomad are able to create an interesting, dark atmosphere in their music. From time to time you can enjoy a quality guitar-solo, a wide variety of voc-killz, and a few intros. Speaking of intros; the first one (the one that starts the album) is especially good – it brings the listener into a kind of hypnotic trance and turns into the first track of the album with a great wall of death metal sound. Most of the tracks are fast but for example “Funeral on the Scaffold of Dreams” drags from the speakers slowly, in a marching manner and doesn't transform into a fast and wild beast until the very end. And straight after this song – as for a dessert – we get the cover of the mighty Italian thrash legend, Bulldozer and their song called “IX” which is closing this material.

I'm really impressed with the front cover painting. On a large, vinyl cover you can see more details in this drawing. It is an amazing drawing which nicely corresponds with the musical content of Nomad's recording.

Really successful album and absolutely the strongest point in the Nomad's discography!

A fast glance at the intricate artwork adorning the cover of Nomad’s Transmigration of Consciousness already reveals that the band does not fall to the most common sub categories of death metal. Not that they are mindblowingly experimental or anything here, but the focus seems to be more on the atmosphere and the flowing of tracks rather than punching death metal.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s a heavy load of death metal murkiness right here that grooves and crushes not unlike Gojira, and there’s also faster blast beat bursts of energy more reminiscent of black metal as also the screams go a tad higher during those sections. But the underlying motif of Transmigration of Consciousness seems to be the ambiance, becoming evident when taking a look at the tracklist alone in which brief ambient tracks precede every single metal track. While one might think that some ambient crap is mood-killing among all the blasting, I think they belong very well to the whole, and all the songs flow seamlessly together.

On paper, the concept of highly atmospheric and rather melodic (expect a nice slew of solos) death metal sounds fantastic and also in practice Transmigration of Consciousness succeeds for the most part. Hate me or not but I still think there’s a lack of truly brilliant songs: the album sounds massive and authentic yet there’s still something lacking in the composition department that would deliver the goose bumps. All around, I enjoy Transmigration of Consciousness, but the riffs simply aren’t anything out of the ordinary to lure me for repeated listens.

2.5 / 5
[ http://www.vehementconjuration.com/ ]

Nomad are perhaps one of the more intellectual and conceptual of the Polish death metal stalwarts, but they've oddly enough received very little attention as of yet. You could very easily compare their sound to Lost Soul, Vader, Behemoth and others within their direct sphere, but not so much that they overlay any one of those bands' particular aesthetics entirely. With luck, their 5th album, Transmigration of Consciousness will build upon their audience, because while I cannot promise that it's completely brilliant, it does capture a fair deal of atmosphere through its mix of ambient and guitar intros and crushing, grooving death hymns.

Similar to Pestilence's Testimony of the Ancients, or Blind Guardian's Nightfall in Middle-Earth, this album alternates its intros, interludes and outros with the full-length tracks. This is not always a welcome practice, and gods know I've seen myriad complaints about the tactic when employed on other works. Well, those complaints would be justified here, since their lack of titles really offers no individual distinction. Some of these are actually quite fetching, like the steady muted clean guitars that inaugurate "Flames of Tomorrow", or the spacey guitar ambiance that heralds "Dazzling Black", and I feel like perhaps they should have just been incorporated straight into the songs. Alas, at the very least Nomad have given the listener the option to skip them and head straight for the meat of the matter...

That meat would be the nine 'actual' songs of the album, which are almost without exception splayed out in a series of deep grooves that fall somewhere between Gojira, Alchemist and Lost Soul in practice. These Poles are far more fond of atmospherics than technicality, so the core of each track like "Dazzling Black" and "Pearl Evil" exists in a simple and bludgeoning space, lorded over by ambient sounds and effects, and the grunting force of vocalist 'Bleyzabel Balberith' (it gets better, as other members have adopted the stage names of 'Hydrant Hydrousus', 'Nameless Immenus' and more lazily 'Domin Dominus'.) The result is an experience both potent and tribal, the lack of truly distinct riffs somewhat compensated through the sheer gravity of what you're hearing, and plenty of deep thrashing segments to which you can break out into a private pseudo-mosh.

There are some deviations of the formula, like the rasped vocals of "Raised Irony", or the more uplifting grooves of "Four Percent of Hate", but the crushing effect of the Transmigration is a constant broken only by the segues. This is certainly the most ambitious and interesting that I've heard from Nomad yet, though I feel like the general quality of the songs on their 2004 effort Demonic Verses (Blessed Are Those Who Kill Jesus) was a little higher. That said, if you're into the structured proficiency of Polish acts Decapitated, Hate, Behemoth and so forth, and don't mind hearing that style pounded into riffing primacy and then lavished with a resilient and darker atmosphere, you might want to experience this mildly unique ritual for yourself.

-autothrall
http://www.fromthedustreturned.com