N.K.V.D. – Totalitarian Industrial Oppression

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Rise of the machine…

Released through Krucyator Productions on 17 October 2016

Review by Jason Guest

2 years ago, fortune did shine upon me when, all the way from Paris, France, Hakmarrja (reviewed here) dropped in the inbox. Cold, harsh, haunting and heavy, I gave that mechanical beast of an album 7.5 out of 10. Having returned to it many times, my reappraisal of it is an easy 9 out of 10. It’s become one of those albums where it’s added to the weekly playlist, either in its entirety or at least three of its crushing tracks. Receiving countless promos means that the list is going through constant revision and it’s the stuff that sticks that gets written about. An e-mail a week or two ago from N.K.V.D. mainman L.F. informing me that the band’s 2007 EP Diktatura and the 2011 debut full length Vlast are available as a compilation, and asks whether I would like to review it. Short answer: yes.

Like Hakmarrja, both releases are haunting, harrowing, heavy and heaving with menace. Vicious and viscous, the atmospheric density alone is excruciating, the inhuman abhorrence at the core of these two releases tangible. What’s evident with this compilation is that L.F. has never been afraid of getting his hands filthy, taking apart both concept and music to examine its workings and piecing it back together again until it works – precisely, flawlessly, like a machine. There’s nothing catchy here. There are no hooks. There’s more malady than melody. This is a heaving mass of unremitting, unrelenting brutality that is as callous and detached as it is enthralling. It’s almost ten years since Diktatura and a good 5 years since Vlast and they still stand strong. N.K.V.D. doesn’t age. Machines don’t. They just keep going. Looks like the playlist just got a new addition…

n-k-v-d-totalitarian-industrial-oppression9 out of 10

For more insight into what N.K.V.D. are about, read our 2014 interview with L.F. here

Diktatura track list:

  1. R.I
  2. Kadyrovski Klan
  3. Die Blinde Wissenschaft
  4. Incipit SSSR
  5. Sloboda

Vlast track list:

  1. Geheime Staats Polizei
  2. Incipit SSSR
  3. Ibn Al Khattab
  4. Alkhan-Kala
  5. Geniul Din Carpati
  6. Krasnaya Paranoia
  7. Socijalisticka Federativna Republika Jugoslavija
  8. Grozny