As it was mentioned already (I guess), Enbilulugugal went through a short-lived name change back in the 2001, when it was known as Chernobog, and under this name Izedis and Nebiru have released a nice little EP called “Nuclear Bloodbath”.
A fucking great title, if you ask me. I won’t hide the fact that I really dig those “post-apocalyptically” oriented releases (and generally, not only from Enbilulugugal), as I find them rather interesting than usual “hail Satan” stuff (booooriiiiing!). So from the “get go” it’s kewl with me!
And as I have said before, if you follow Enbilulugugal from release to release, you can really see their progress. From the first demo to this EP – the guys stay true to their genre niche, but every release is different, and every release is better than the previous one.
Now, without ranting too much (I still will, you know), the EP contains 5 songs and they are seriously long ones! Starting with the “Nuclear Bloodbath”, this nice simple stroking of guitar strings just deceive you into the relax and then boom! you’re thrown into the chaos, madness and sorrow of the post-apocalyptic world. Relentless drum sound driving the guitar riffs and insane vokills of Izedis makes this a real exercise of aural pain and discomfort. Yeah, it’s the hell on Earth with the ICBMs added as a fucking bonus! And I’ve said it before and I will repeat it again. These guys were talented as hell (I am writing in the past sense, as Nebiru is no longer with us, as you might know), but Izedis, continuing as the unstoppable driving force behind this cult band, still proves he’s got the balls to go on.
But I am leaping forward far too much, back to the EP. Second song is “Demonic Genocide” and it continues with the style of the EP, although it is much more chaotic. To this day I don’t know how Izedis could scream for the whole length of these songs, but he did. That’s a real harvester of sorrow, forget Metallica…this is the fucking bulldozer going through the fields of bones – remember that scene from The Terminator? I am forgiving James Cameron for not using this in the soundtrack, because Enbilulugugal was not yet created…Cameron’s only acceptable excuse!
“Defiled Holy Carcass” is the third track and as I’ve said, I kinda like their stuff more in the post-apoc settings, but whatever. Another long track this one is, with interesting drum loops under the layers of black noise as only Enbilulugugal can create. One hardly can decipher the distorted vokills, which gaining the more prominent position as some kind of another instrument, but that’s OK. By the way, that pasage about 4 minutes in – it fucking kills.
“Flaming Inferno” invokes the scorching of the landscape during the nuclear war, the intense, mesmerizing event, strengthened by the nice guitar riffs which once again betray Nebiru’s ability to play, the drums at times creates an audio-image of endless waves marching warbots…damn you, Terminator!!! The end of the song actually spells destruction.
And the last song here is “Smoldering Flesh (The Aftermath)” and what a fitting name for this shortest track on the EP. But After the absolutely superior “Flaming Inferno”, this one feels little odd, it should be placed somehow before the aforementioned song. But that’s only my opinion, so it doesn’t matter.
Chernobog’s output here is nicely summed up in the words of Hungarian culturologist Erzebet B. Csejthe: “In the ever-present spirit of the post-Cold War era lingering over us, and the threat of the nuclear encounter between superpowers or some dirty bomb terrorist attack stronger than ever, the fear of the possible outcome translates into the works of many artists. Chernobog defuses this totally rational fear turning it on its head – instead of being afraid, they – and many artists similar to them – embrace the possible nuclear Armageddon not in the way of apocalyptic sects, but in some form of perverse dada –their message, basically, is: So what, not a big deal – deal with it.”
And I can only agree with that.
As usual, you can find this and other Enbilulugugal releases on Archive.org.
