In 2016 Spain's Altarage changed the face of death metal with a watershed moment that marked an inexorable point of no return, and Sentient Ruin was there to tell this story through release of the band's debut demo the year prior and of this beast on cassette tape format the following year. With its sheer tonnage and immensity, "Nihl" appeared instantly as a masterpiece that would pave the way to a new era of death metal and to a new way of conceiving and interpreting the notion of absolute heaviness. While the game-changing repercussions and influence this monster has had on extreme metal may still require some years to be fully assessed and understood, still nothing in the present can challenge what Altarage have accomplished and constructed within the omnipotency of "Nihl". Before "Nihl" dissonant, abstract, atmospheric extreme metal, and traditional riff-heavy death metal still lived two clearly defined, separated existences traveling on parallel trajectories which rarely touched. "Nihl" created a visionary and daring perturbation in this balance. A foreboding disturbance which sent the course of events on an entire new path, causing the two styles to inexorably converge unto another creating a new lineage of hyper-evolved death metal that conjoined the best of both worlds and triggered the birth of a new death metal world entirely its own. A world in which the notions of immensity, surrealism, and sensorial oppression assume monstrous traits and in which unreality becomes a not only a reality, but a bleak weapon of catharsis and transcendence. After working with the band from their obscure inception back in 2015, we continue to honor and celebrate the genius and legacy of Altarage, particularly of "Nihl", the point of no return that gifted us all with a new notion of heaviness, with a reissue on all formats of a beast whose power and enormity remain enigmatic and ungraspable, but widely acknowledged and revered to this day.
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