Band:	N.K.V.D.
Album:	Vlast
Style:	Industrial black metal
Release date:	2011

01. Geheime Staats Polizei
02. Incipit SSSR
03. Ibn Al Khattab
04. Alkhan-Kala
05. Geniul Din Carpati
06. Krasnaya Paranoia
07. Socijalisticka Federativna Republika Jugoslavija
08. Grozny

A spectre is haunting black metal ? the spectre of communism. What? Hell no, don't be misguided by the grandiose soviet aesthetic of the cover artwork and the imposing hammer & sickle at its centre. It's not a call to arms for the proletariat to fight back oppression. Judging from the title of their first EP, Dictatura, and its cover which is a multi-portrait of Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Slobodan Milosevic and Akhmad Kadyrov you can get a reference to what N.K.V.D.'s music wants to bring forth through their politically incorrect design status. Everything becomes clearer when you get in mind that N.K.V.D. (Narodny Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del - People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs) was one of Stalin's major weapons to strangle the voices of his opposers once and forever.

Vlast is their debut full-length release and it's a ruthless, massive blast of hatred through its vast, emotionless and cold soundscapes. Of course it's industrial black metal we're talking about, drawing its inspiration from totalitarian rulers whose voice is breathing through the compositions with sampled speeches they left behind them in the march of history. Big moustache, small moustache, no moustache, the actions are in the same sphere, it's the magnitude that differs and the veil under which they are covered. N.K.V.D. set this veil aflame and evoke a mechanical, often militaristic, ambiance through their sonic rapture.

The compositions are surrounded by a thick darkness as if a parasitic swarm was omnipresent during the recording. The production compliments Vlast, accomplishing in the first place everything the band wanted to present through their sound and visual aspects. There's a heavy industry working on in here, from the mechanical fumes and effects to the programmed drumming and from the menacing continuous riffing to the floating threat, the keyboards. "Socijalisticka Federativna Republika Jugoslavija" is the perfect example of instrumental militaristic industrial black metal with bombastic ambiance which engulfs pure human darkness and whose only voice is a sample. Of course there are vocals in the album that enrich the band's visions through their either fuming/rasping or hoarse echoing edge. Without them the outcome would still be clinical, but with them it's exquisite.

I have to admit that I really adored the very end of the album, a few seconds of chanting from an orthodox liturgy is always welcome after all this chaos, with the difference that it makes the effect even stronger with some hypocrisy-infused divinity.

You don't know what to expect until you listen, you will definitely find some Mysticum in here, but in the end what you'll really witness is 37 minutes of abhorrent disharmony and echoes from the recent past transmuted in morse signals in exchange for your soul.