(written by Islander)
The Belgian progressive black metal band Nyrak has enjoyed what we can fairly call a meteoroic ascent. It did not exist until late 2021, when it was founded by Guy “Nevel” Van Nieuwenhove as a solo studio project, but in relatively short order Nyrak released their debut album Malvs in 2022, expanded into a full band and released their second album Devourer Of All in 2024, and in 2025 released both the Faceless Tyrant EP and a third album, Phoenix Mortis. Moreover, Nyrak toured the UK and Europe in support of that most recent album.
And yet Nyrak’s meteor continues soaring, apparently unhindered by gravity wells, because on November 26th of this year Void Wanderer Productions will release yet another Nyrak album, a new one named Empires of Ash. We were fortunate to host the premiere of a song from Phoenix Mortis last year, and we get the chance to do the same for Empires of Ash as we now present the new album’s opening song, “The Saturnalia Prophecy“, in cooperation with Black Metal Streams.
In considering the Nyrak song (“Leviathan”) that we premiered last year we summed it up as “by turns calamitous, incendiary, thunderous, storm-like, and hopeless — apocalyptic in its scale, an elaborately textured rendering of terrible majesty and ruinous downfall that’s as captivating as it is stunning.”
But that song, despite how multi-faceted it was, didn’t exhaustively reveal all the layers of Nyrak’s sound, even then, and it’s fair to say that the music on Empires of Ash displays even greater and more elaborate degrees of variation. Even in its first minute, “The Saturnalia Prophecy compellingly demonstrates this.
Its opening moments are ethereal and haunting, but the sound swiftly swells and then explodes in a torrent of hyper-speed blast-beats, blizzard-like riffage, and immense orchestral tides that add both grandeur and a desolate atmosphere. Enhancing the music’s fury, the vocals shriek the words with incendiary intensity, but the music also roils and descends in ways that are unsettling and tragic, like an elegantly rendered hybrid of anguish and fear.
The song’s overarching orchestral tides give it expansive sweep and daunting emotional power, while the thundering heaviness of the bass, the furious but rapidly changing drum patterns, and the scorching and roaring vocals generate visceral, feral, hard-charging intensity. Altogether, it sounds like an unfolding calamity of multiple dimensions, a combination of panoramic tragedy and full-blown tumult.
Eventually a transition occurs. The drums slow and boom; the symphonic shroud lifts; and the riffing generates a menacing buzz. But the music swells and soars again, pierced by shrill keening keys that sound like a chorus of grieving apparitions. The music heavily throbs and grievously wails, wondrously glimmers yet remains a powerful channel of suffering.
At the end the song wraps back around to the haunting, ethereal sensations of its beginning, now created with classical orchestral instrumentation.
As for the album as a whole, Void Wanderer underscores its musical contrasts:
Uncompromising black metal is combined with complex structures, dark melodies and atmospheric passages. Carefully integrated orchestral layers add depth and grandeur at the right moments, without ever overshadowing the raw power of the music…. Beneath the aggression, darkness and musical depth lies an album exploring decay, human hubris, power and mortality.
NYRAK Album Lineup:
Guy ‘Nevel’ Van Nieuwenhove: guitars, bass, orchestration
Bram Veldeman: drums
Lukas Risbourg: vocals
Sven Van Laere: backing vocals
All the music for Empire of Ash was written by Guy ‘Nevel’ Van Nieuwenhove. The album was mixed by Wannes Verschoren and mastered by Szymon Wojciech. The stunning cover art was created by Belial NecroArts, and the logo by Modblack Moon.
Void Wanderer will release the album on vinyl LP and CD formats, and recommends it for fans of Der Weg Einer Freiheit, Septicflesh, and Hate.
PRE-ORDER:
Vinyl: https://voidwanderer.com/product/nyrak-empires-of-ash-lp-preorder/
CD: https://voidwanderer.com/product/nyrak-empires-of-ash-cd-preorder/
NYRAK:
https://www.nyrak.be
https://www.facebook.com/NyrakOfficial
https://www.instagram.com/NyrakOfficial