It's not even the end of July, but we're pretty sure that at the end of the year when we're voting for our top albums, Nachtmystium's Assassins Black Meddle Part 1 will be right there near the top.
The extreme experimental band's sixth full-length expands upon the musical growth it displayed on 2006's Instinct: Decay. Now, instead of merely dabbling with psychedelic sounds, Nachtmystium has drawn inspiration from their old Pink Floyd, King Crimson and Neu! records to create a disc that's at times painfully claustrophobic, yet frequently rife with expansive textures. The apparent contradiction allows the band to breathe and explore like never before without losing the black metal minimalism it cultivated years ago from bands like Darkthrone and Mayhem.
As reflected in his music, which shatters boundaries and scoffs at convention, Nachtmystium frontman Blake Judd abhors the constrictive constructs and shallow content of much of today's black metal acts. Moreover, he despises the trendy and unimaginative developments of the scene and prefers to tour with audacious indie bands like Boris and Torche than go out on the road with a bunch of spike-wearing face-painted Norwegians.
To get to the bottom of Nachtmystium's blackened, ethereal souls we tracked down Judd at his home in Chicago and talked about his musical motivations, his label Battle Kommand Records, why his group signed to Century Media, the indulgences that color his brand of psychedelia and who a metal band has to sleep with to get a burger named after it.
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