Al-Namrood have some cachet as being a Black Metal band from Saudi Arabia, where they would likely go to jail if anyone caught them recording this stuff. Their last album, the rather frenetic Estorat Taghoot was pretty awesome, even if it did sound a lot like Melechesh. This time out, Al-Namrood have expanded their sound in vital and surprising ways, making for a more individual and epic sound on their latest, Kitab Al-Awthan (roughly "The Book of Idols")
Al-Namrood (named for Nimrod, who inhabits a position in Mideastern Myth as something akin to Darth Vader) present a powerful sound this time out, with driving guitar crunch laid over swelling keys swathed in oriental music and atonal mideastern chord progressions, all of it punched up by almost industrial-sounding electronic drums. I don't know if I'd call it a Black Metal sound, even with the harsh vocals, but their iconoclastic and antireligious lyrics leave no room for doubt.
I find this a really fresh and exciting-sounding album. I've never heard a band who incorporated the mideast sounds as fully as this one, and even if the vocals are pretty flat and featureless, they don't predominate and the compositions are big, epic, and insanely hooky, sweeping you along on a tide of exotic sound. If you like Melechesh at their most oriental or wish there was such a thing as an Arabian Summoning - there kind of is, and this band is it. A great fucking album.
