Out of the wicked mountainous dwellings of Colorado emerge NIGHTBRINGER with their new release "Ego Dominus Tuus". This album marks the fourth full-length to be released by the US black metal band since their formation in 2001. It's comprised of Black Metall musicians who, for the most part, have all started their own solo bands outside of this band but have collectively culminated together as NIGHTBRINGER. You definitely get your money's worth on this album. Clocking in at over 72 minutes, "Ego Dominus Tuus" is as massive as a plume of smog dissipating off of a funeral pyre.

There is certainly the element that I would say is very old school spooky. 'Old school spooky' as in haunted castle kind of spooky. Things like the church organs on the end of "Things Which Are Naught" drive this home and the ominous vocals, uttering blasphemous incantation, really remind me of the band BAL-SAGOTH and how none of their lyrics are really sung or screamed but rather very dramatically recited. There is definitely cheesiness to this music, as sinister as the band and record label would like you to believe it isn't. But it's only slightly comical. The ripping guitar riffs are as serious as a heart attack.

Near the end of the "Ego Dominus Tuus", the songs begin to spiral down into more tangible atmospheres. The sense of occultism and ritual are certainly communicated better on tracks like "Salvation is the Son of Leviathan" than most of the preceding tracks on the album. It's somewhat refreshing but also somewhat baffling. The majority of this NIGHTBRINGER album is made up of your atypical Black Metal composition. Similar to DARK FUNERAL, DARKTHRONE, and 1349, the audience is getting more or less the same quality of Black Metal as if they were listening to any anti-Christian band from Europe. NIGHTBRINGER is certainly upholding a USBM standard to their music but the music sounds ancient.

That's not necessarily a bad thing, though. There are a lot of ancient Sumerian vibes I am getting off of songs like "I Am the Gateway", "Call of the Exile" and "Et Nox Illuminatio mea in Deliciis Meis". But, aside from the flavours of elder harmonies from heretical histories, the Black Metal does bring back a lot of roots from the early-to-mid 1990's and how it sounds now, twenty years later. NIGHTBRINGER accomplish a feat of musical necromancy by resurrecting the lifeless tones and rhythms of the second wave of Black Metal that is so highly revered by the subgenre's elite fan base. They can draw out a little long, which gets pretty boring after the first five minutes. You're no longer feeling a wicked and supernatural atmosphere, you are just listening to the keyboardist mess with a sampler.

If you are a huge Mlack Metal fan, you shouldn't skip on "Ego Dominus Tuus". I just wouldn't recommend this release for any of the uninitiated audience members or carriers of curiosity for Black Metal.