NYOGTHAEBLISZ, Progenitors of Mankind’s Annihilation  (2003, demo)

The skull:
Bonus points for the super-great logo, which drips in complete harmony with the skull itself, which looks like it’s starting to melt. Maybe a contact lens with the radiation symbol on it wasn’t a good choice after all. Fucking jokers at Lenscrafters, the skull went in and just wanted something rebellious. Gotta watch out for those assholes. Guess it’s back to stupid clunky glasses for the Nyogthaeblisz skull. (Nickname: Spencer, in the tradition of Eddie and Vic Rattlehead and all that.)

The music:
Just when I thought I’d heard the most necrolicious black metal ever recorded comes Nyogthazeirqfkdafldblitz. While this demo has got the basement/cave quality of something like Ildjarn, in its most frenzied moments (like, most all of it) it sounds closer to a lo-fi Merzbow than a Gorgoroth or Horna or whatever. You could argue that it’s high art in its disorienting, blurry, beyond-extreme approach, but even for somebody that can take extremity at its most distant outer fringes, there’s nothing offered here that would make me return a second time. I do like how they mix deeply chaotic dark occult black metal imagery with post-nuclear imagery, lots of “bioterroristic” this and “thermonuclear” that. As this 23-minute demo reaches about the nine minute mark, I feel like I’ve heard it all, these guys making early Anaal Nathrakh and those ancient Mayhem demos sound trite and safe by comparison, but without any graspable substance. Nah, I kid, these boys are gonna take it all the way to the top! It’s something everyone can enjoy, and I see nothing but success on the horizon for these ghoulish Texas-born shock-rockers — they just need to change the name to something more chant-able at the summer festivals.
— Friar Wagner