Metal Riot

“Everyone is your enemy Everyone’s your friend. Every possible series of
events is happening all at once,” says Aidan Gillen (Pertyr Baelish) on Game Of Thrones at one point this season. I’m starting off this first post on the site about Nachtmystium in a few years with this quote because I always believe there can be many potential outcomes to a story or at least believe in rehabilitation. I also believe people can change but that sometimes they really hurt one another along the way and that often healing never happens.

I guess what I am trying to say is we all have the capacity to really let one another down or to choose a different path.

I didn’t cover a lot of Blake Judd’s near death spiral, robbing of fans and months spent homeless much the past few years. We had been pretty good friends at one point and regularly communicated during the middle to end stages of The World We Left Behind album. It really was a big bummer, as someone who kicked dope a long time ago but knows how wretched and self-erasing an addiction it can be, when I learned that my friend had bottomed out worse than ever. One of the last times I had talked to him he needed money and wanted to sell some artwork and I mentioned it to a popular occult artist friend of mine in Chicago, which never happened. But in hindsight for awhile felt really lousy wondering if it had been a hustle on Blake’s part, especially since he had never wronged me but I had learned he had obviously wronged others.

I also am friendly with some of his former Twilight band mates who had some major static with him towards the end of his tenure with the band and at other points. I’d never want to willfully upset those dudes as I love Stavros from Atlas Moth and we have met in person and get along pretty well. I also like Neill from Krieg who has arguably had the biggest rift with Blake and who was very kind to me with some good advice when I was not drinking for a few years around the time my dad passed. We communicate every so often and I have been loving the shit out of the Poison Blood record.

More below.

Nachtmystium‘s The World We Left Behind is going to fly over people’s heads, but not for lack of scrutiny on their parts. I could make a bad joke and say it will fly over heads because the guy who wrote it was really fuckin’ high a lot, but…it’s truly because it can’t be properly accessed in a context of snark or outcry at the “Blake Judd” controversies surrounding the record. The addict struggling to be clean, in the true throes of a bottoming out, is in a desperate vertiginous hell. It is like being underwater and being (to name drop a great Albany, Ny band) Surrounded By Teeth.

The essence of the looming pressure to make a final Nachtmystium record was very real. The outcry over Blake’s handling of money from the public as well as angry former band mates (who say they will never work with him again) was a very palpable thing. It’s interesting that Jeff Wilson’s Wolvhammer have made the killer black metal album, Clawing Into Black Sun, that many people wish had been The World We Left Behind. I did the first interview on this record awhile before the arrest scandal broke, for Metal Riot.

Judd was in great spirits then…about getting his life on track and working with the musicians who he had found to be in TWWLB-era line up. I also spoke extensively with Blake during the cold winter while this album was coming together.My own life was falling apart at this time and a lengthy relationship. Blake and I ended up deeply discussing addiction , stress and and personal goals in our lives, friends we missed and other cool matters from trivial to deadly serious.

I believe he was being genuine during that time.

Click HERE to read more.

I’ve heard some amazing music this year, from Across Tundras dusty and wistful Electric Relics to the mystical, fuckin’ sexy Purson psych rock album The Circle And The Blue Door, but only a few great new Black Metal records (Horns high to you, Watain). When it comes to BM, I nowadays prefer the weirdo American psychedelic Nachtmystium strand to some of the more strictly Euro flavors (except maybe the Bathory worship of the awesome Ereb Altor). I’d heard Nachtmystium founder Blake Judd was recording new shit at Belle City Sound in Wisconsin and was fuck all tired of waiting to find out more.

So…I’d interviewed Blake Judd for this site once before for Addicts and brazenly got the idea to personally write him and ask if he’d like to give us at Metal Riot an in studio report on what Nachtmystium are up to. Not only does the Nacht-meister agree but he fucking does the coolest thing ever and lets me hear incomplete tracks for the record! It was a board mix with flat EQ from the first of two sessions until the band returns from recess and track more guitars, vocals and synths, but it is already better than many of the finished records I’ve heard this year.

Dissonance fills the material but the songs are really charged and powerful, ranging from second wave nodding BM fury to eccentric side steps into hell. Even with a shit board reference mix the distorted bass already rumbles like pounding hooves shaking the earth and the drums snap with life and pocket, loose and human in feel yet tightly executed. Where did Blake find these dudes?! As for Judd, his relentless guitar riffs are morose yet darkly comforting (in an unsettling way, haha), delivered with the attack that makes Nachtmystium so much more memorable than many “peers”.

“Considering that I wrote this entire record myself with only a little input from the other two members on this record, I had a lot of pressure on me to create a lot of music in a short period of time,” says Judd. “It actually worked out to be a very good thing as this type of pressure really helps me perform and write at the best level of my abilities.”

If you’ve been listening to recent rumors…no, Nachtmystium are obviously not over. Blake has been writing amazing new shit and has a freshly overhauled line-up of the band ready to go. After a year off from gigging, Nachtmystium are going to return in force very soon. I can’t wait to hear this album when it is all finished and catch the new version live.

Un-holy shit! Click HERE to read the full interview.