Seems most black metal now wants to harken back to “ye good olde days”of the ‘90s, as caught up in nostalgia as the rest of the society its purports to hate and stand apart from. Right, tell me again about your nihilistic rebellion that sounds like 86 other bands. Natvre’s manage to take a very small amount of that 90’s influence we all enjoy the taste of and weave it into a sound that is distinctly current but still violent and relentless. Not “current” like post-black metal clean singing nonsense, don’t worry. “Sunbather” this is not. This album kicks your door in and drags you screaming to the funeral pyre, make no mistakes.

“Wrath” doesn’t dwell in contemplative meditation in the forests of its namesake nor does it plumb the pits of depression; this is the natural world at its most violent. This is the sound of an earthquake mercilessly wiping out a village, of a forest fire reducing all to ash. The album doesn’t wait around for you to figure out what you want from it, instead throwing you right into thorny chaos from the first moments of “Lazarines.” “Narcissus” continues the assault the opening track began, a pommeling low end pushing you into a thorny wall of riffs that edges ever closer, threatening impalement.

“Hinterlands” is the longest track on the album, standing in the middle of it all, a shelter from the storm that swirls around it. The back half of “Wrath” has some less straightforward songs on it, though all of them still exhibit the same fury and rage on the first half. “The Woven Art” is the closest thing to a miss for me on this album, its opening riffs sound out of place and (fuck i’m gonna say it again) surfy. Might work for some folks, doesn’t work for me. By the midway point of this song, I forget all about those opening riffs though so this is minor.The album culminates in “Nature’s War”, a fittingly bleak and aggressive song that combines everything that works about this release into a powerful distillation. Grab this release from Argento Records.