-Introducing Sundrung-

Now, with a lineup empowered with the introduction of former Fortið and Kontinuum drummer, Kristján Guðmundsson, Nexion is poised to release Sundrung. Taking its name from Old Icelandic, Sundrung is “discord, disharmony and the sundering of the social and cosmic fabric”. The album is an act of rebirth through the cycle of destruction. It’s vastly more dynamic and far-reaching than its predecessor. Monumental in its sheer presence and scope, expanding its blast radius into new sonic realms, Sundrung is riven with an apocalyptic fervour that’s ramped up to the most galvanising, consciousness-searing of degrees as it becomes an incendiary act of deliverance.

As well as charting humankind’s journey into perdition, Sundrung is an extension of personal paths. Unlike with Seven Oracles, vocalist Jósúa has turned to his own life, grounded in the perspectives of animism, indigenous thinking and Norse cosmology, and branching out into clean vocals for the first time. His approach is to ask, what are our responsibilities to a world that is greater than us but which we can harm, how do we relate to one another and the world around us holistically, and if we have already failed, what empowerment do we find on a fixed path toward ruin. Calling upon scenes of cosmic violence and performing ancient chants of ritual magic to summon death goddesses who weave human destiny with bloody entrails, Sundrung’s implacable, lay-waste momentum is infused with an imperious grandeur.

The album’s first single Gandr is also a curse. Ritually inverting an ancient runic ward against destroyer spirits, the song calls them forth against mankind’s perpetrators of discord. Jósúa’s vocals range from slavering rasps and shrieks to guttural throat-sung incantations and clean-sung sermons as guitars writhe like an aurora borealis irradiating the atmosphere from the Earth as it reaches a desolated close.

Through When Raven Steals The Sun’s chest-constricting percussion and Valkyrie-swarm riffs to the caustic churn of Rending The Black Earth, Nexion don’t so much attempt to make sense of the present, as draw the chaos out of it, to yoke it to their turbulent, yet unshakeable will. Sundrung closes on Visions Of The Seventh Fire, its atmospheric intro, tribal drums and traces of sitar set the scene to lead into a final conflagration. Its last words of the album are two stanzas from the old Icelandic poem Völuspá – a vision of a fertile green earth born anew. But with its rebirth comes a dragon who represents death. The vocal chants embody rebirth and death, and spiral together toward the end, allowing the cosmic dance to turn full cycle once more. Unshackled from the insularity black metal can often force itself into, widescreen in its vision and devastating in all senses, Sundrung is an all-encompassing statement of intent, its purpose not to reinvent the wheel but to cast it in its most incandescent light.”

-Words by music journalist Jonathan Selzer.