by Niklas Göransson

The cold reception of Apocalypse Sun left Alcameth staring into a void of his own making – burdened by disappointment yet driven by hunger for redemption. And so began Nightbringer’s march toward the Hierophany of the Open Grave.

 

NAAS ALCAMETH: It felt as if I’d invested my whole life into “Apocalypse Sun” – and failed. I don’t necessarily think the actual songs are bad, but we followed a production path without realising where it was leading. The album had horrible reviews, and The Ajna Offensive dropped us immediately.

Upon its May 2010 release by The Ajna Offensive and Italy’s Avantgarde Music, “Apocalypse Sun” sold poorly in North America. Disappointed by its reception, Ajna owner Tyler Davis severed ties with NIGHTBRINGER and cancelled plans to release Alcameth’s side project, BESTIA ARCANA.

ALCAMETH: Truthfully, I was super depressed. I’ve always had such a die-hard attitude toward black metal, and I feel like we captured that with our debut, “Death and the Black Work”. But on “Apocalypse Sun,” I sold myself out without even realising.

Alcameth’s frustration stemmed from the album’s production, which gradually drifted toward a cleaner, more clinical sound – something he didn’t fully realise until it was too late. The drums, particularly the triggered bass, became too prominent, as incremental studio decisions prioritised precision over atmosphere.

Beyond soundscape, the songwriting itself also played a role. Alcameth felt NIGHTBRINGER had pushed their compositions to technical extremes, layering intricate, intertwining guitar lines until the raw energy that defined “Death and the Black Work” became obscured, stripping the material of its immediacy and primal force.

ALCAMETH: The backlash was so intense that I wasn’t sure we’d be able to recover. Suddenly, everything NIGHTBRINGER stood for had apparently died. Now, we were just another drum-triggered, clicky, pristine, digital black metal band – like some fucking DARK FUNERAL. That’s not at all what I intended.

 

NOX CORVUS: Personally, I enjoyed “Apocalypse Sun”. If others didn’t, that’s just their opinion. I understand Kyle’s (Alcameth) frustration, and I’ll always back him, but these things don’t bother me. I’m glad each NIGHTBRINGER record stands apart.

ALCAMETH: I was among those same critics; I got it. I felt like we took everything people respected about our debut on Full Moon Productions – this old-school black metal gem – and turned it into a clinical, sterile-sounding album. We lost that wild chaos that’s essential to great black metal.

Worth noting is that “Apocalypse Sun” fared better in Europe. Three years after its initial release, Finnish label Blood Music reissued it on vinyl, and Avantgarde Music did both CD and LP represses in 2022.

ALCAMETH: Sure, it’s all in the eye of the beholder – there’s this whole strange sub-following of “Apocalypse Sun”. But at the end of the day, I’m trying to reach like-minded individuals. I want to connect with people who understand my ideas – not in a vague, peripheral sense, but in a very direct way.

Another sign that Alcameth’s concerns weren’t universally shared appeared a few months after the release of “Apocalypse Sun”, when French label Season of Mist approached NIGHTBRINGER with a record deal.

ALCAMETH: Coming from a more die-hard black metal background, we debated whether or not to do it, right? At the time, Season of Mist had bands like MORBID ANGEL, WATAIN, yada yada. We decided to roll with it, and they did a great job. Season of Mist is very much a business, and that’s how things are done.

VJS: For us, the real question was, ‘Do we really want to expose NIGHTBRINGER?’ We prided ourselves on being the best of the best, so I genuinely questioned whether the wider metal audience even deserved to know about us. But Kyle, in his wisdom, convinced me: ‘Let’s try being on a bigger label just once. We won’t compromise or change, so there’s no danger in that.’

NOX CORVUS: Kyle always handled all communications. He was on the internet from his mid-teens, building contacts nationwide and eventually across the world. He basically grew up networking, exchanging messages, and making connections. I feel like a lot of these labels had already heard of him through Moshpit Records.

With a new record deal secured and a burning hunger for underground redemption, NIGHTBRINGER focused on their third album.

ALCAMETH: It was like, ‘There are two choices here. I can let this be the hill I die on, or I can redeem myself.’ You’ve got to pick yourself back up. I eventually decided, ‘Okay, I have to move past this now and release a good record.’

VJS: Many individuals were no longer on this earth or had resolved their human situations, so the four of us – Alcameth, me, Nox Corvus, and Ophis – could reconvene. It made the creative energies flow freely, as if we’d all survived the first war and emerged battle-hardened, ready to strike.

 

By the end of 2010, NIGHTBRINGER had another full-length’s worth of material. That December, they entered Flatline Audio to record “Hierophany of the Open Grave”. The line-up had expanded to include an additional vocalist and lyricist – a Swede who goes by the name ar-Ra’d al-Iblis.

NOX CORVUS: I think we’d matured by then, both as musicians and as men. I was around thirty, and our sound reflected that. From memory, I wrote about half the material. Honestly, besides “Apocalypse Sun”, this is the best work I’ve done – my favourite guitar parts are on “Hierophany…”. I’m glad it exists so I can revisit them.

VJS: Things were finally moving in the direction “Death and the Black Work” hinted at – which brought a sense of promise and profound potential. Upon completing “Hierophany of the Open Grave”, it felt as if we had reached our moment.

ALCAMETH: “Hierophany…” was better than “Apocalypse Sun”, but still a bit all over the place. To me, it’s a good album – maybe a little too eclectic, with many hands in the pot.

NOX CORVUS: We also had VJS playing drums on maybe half the songs. It was the first time someone else had drummed for NIGHTBRINGER on an album, so it added a welcome change. If memory serves, he tracked drums on Kyle’s material, and I recorded mine.

VJS: I’m not entirely sure why we did that, but I think it was partly because Nox could visit the studio and record his sections himself. It sped things along. Also, our drum styles are different, and I suspect we wanted a more traditional black metal approach on Kyle’s material.

NOX CORVUS: We already had multiple guitar styles in our music, and now two distinct drum approaches on one record – which I thought worked great. It was an interesting period for us, and I actually got brutally ill during recording, throwing up while laying down vocals and guitar parts: flu, head cold, you name it.

 

“Hierophany of the Open Grave” was released by Season of Mist in August 2011, receiving an overall warmer welcome than its predecessor. But beyond an appearance at Maryland Deathfest IX in Baltimore – with Marutgana replacing Horidus on bass – not much happened in the NIGHTBRINGER camp that year.

VJS: All of us were in tumultuous periods personally. We pushed so hard during those days because of our communal living arrangement. Naturally, it built up to a collision.

In February 2012, Alcameth and Nox Corvus recorded four tracks – two of them instrumental – for “The Ruins of Edom”, a split with Greek black metal band ACHERONTAS. NIGHTBRINGER’s newest member, ar-Ra’d al-Iblis, contributed lyrics and vocals.

ALCAMETH: Ophis and VJS sat this one out. Nox and I handled it on our own, more or less.

NOX CORVUS: That recording situation felt strange. Kyle and I did some of the tracking at his place in Denver, and I wasn’t certain about the band’s future, so it was a weird time.

ALCAMETH: Nox and VJS didn’t get along, and there was a lot of internal strife. Unfortunately, things came to a head soon after, and Nox left NIGHTBRINGER. But it wasn’t that I let him go – he chose to leave. He dismissed himself from the band.

VJS: I’d rather not get into specifics. It boiled down to extreme personalities, behaviours, and clashes between young men. Simple as that.

NOX CORVUS: VJS and I were never enemies, but we also weren’t as close as Kyle and I have always been. Nevertheless, things kept bubbling to the surface, and maybe my passion didn’t burn as brightly. It’s like breaking up with a girlfriend – you don’t always realise it’s truly over until much later. That’s how it felt.

 

Meanwhile, NIGHTBRINGER’s rising profile following the success of “Hierophany of the Open Grave” earned the band an invitation to perform at Under the Black Sun – an underground open-air festival in Berlin, Germany.

ALCAMETH: Hellbent on finally playing Europe, I agreed. The only problem was, I didn’t have a band. I’d recently befriended the guys from ACHERONTAS – who were also on the bill – and they said, ‘We’ll learn the NIGHTBRINGER songs.’

NIGHTBRINGER were booked for two European shows in the summer of 2012 – one in France and the other in Germany. Alcameth decided to fly out a few days early to visit Christbutcher, the bassist from his and Nox Corvus’ old death metal band, EXCOMMUNION.

ALCAMETH: He’d moved to Finland some years earlier – met a girl, and so on. I spent a few days there, and we might’ve gone a bit overboard with the reminiscing on the last night, so my early morning flight to Paris was completely hellacious. By the time we landed, I wasn’t in great shape.

After being picked up by a festival shuttle driver at the airport, Alcameth was dropped off at the venue, Glazart, near Porte de la Villette in Paris.

ALCAMETH: As an American coming from the black metal scene, you end up mythicising these iconic European cities. And let me tell you, they don’t always match your imagination. You build expectations from what you’ve seen growing up, but looking around… I had clearly landed myself in a very different part of Paris. It was a bit of culture shock.

 

NIGHTBRINGER were scheduled to play Black Metal is Rising VII on July 1, 2012 – a Parisian festival featuring FORTERESSE, TEMPLE OF BAAL, BLACKDEATH, and others. The event is said to have been somewhat haphazardly organised, handled by promoters more familiar with the punk scene. The venue itself was essentially a squat.

ALCAMETH: I had about twelve hours to kill before the Greeks arrived. Our sleeping area was this industrial cement room with filthy, clearly well-used mattresses and no working sink. So, there I was – dog-sick hungover, alone in a foreign country, and without even water. Not the best scenario.

Eventually, the need for food and hydration forced Alcameth to venture out.

ALCAMETH: I thought, ‘Fuck this, I have the means – I’m getting a hotel.’ But for whatever reason, everything nearby was booked out. I wandered from one lobby to another, trying to get a room, only to be turned away each time. In all that meandering, I completely lost my bearings. I spent a good while retracing my steps before, somehow, managing to find the venue again.

Since the makeshift NIGHTBRINGER lineup had never played together, the plan was to rehearse once the Greek musicians arrived. Despite promises from the promoters to provide equipment, there was nothing – no gear, no way to practise.

ALCAMETH: I’d already questioned whether playing live was a good idea, given how technical the NIGHTBRINGER material is. It’s tough enough when we only have a couple of jam sessions beforehand. Now, magnify that a hundredfold by guys who aren’t familiar with the songs, have never played them together, and only spent however much time looking at tablature.

How did it go?

ALCAMETH: I think everyone put their best foot forward and tried as best they could, but the show felt pretty rough. It sounded like a NIGHTBRINGER cover band that had been thrown together over the weekend. Honestly, it was a bit of a disaster. No fault of theirs – it just wasn’t the best way to present ourselves.

 

The second European NIGHTBRINGER show was scheduled for Under the Black Sun in Berlin, Germany, one week later.

ALCAMETH: I ended up stuck in Paris for a week, which wasn’t the worst situation. MkM (ANTAEUS) invited us to a café near the Louvre. I remember bringing up the French band DRASTUS, and MkM told me the guy behind it is a pretty intense character with some insane stories – and that made me appreciate them even more.

The following weekend, Alcameth’s provisional NIGHTBRINGER lineup – now expanded with ar-Ra’d al-Iblis – performed at Under the Black Sun.

ALCAMETH: That one went a bit better. I feel like we roughed our way through it. The festival had a professional setup – a proper stage and everything – but with the open-air element, you’re still surrounded by forest, under the bare sky. We played at night, which added to the magic of the setting.

Russian black metal band BLACKDEATH also performed at Under the Black Sun, having made their debut on continental Europe at Black Metal is Rising VII the weekend prior. Co-founder and frontman Para Bellum described it as an overall otherworldly experience – but above all, a chance to meet long-time contacts in the flesh.

ALCAMETH: Under the Black Sun was incredible – meeting all these people and being immersed in underground black metal atmosphere. More importantly, that’s where I started forming real connections with Europeans. I met Carl (ar-Ra’d al-Iblis) in person for the first time. So, in that sense, it felt very worthwhile.

 

VJS: I eventually heard about Kyle’s European ordeal – but at the time, I was too caught up in my own world to pay much attention. My life had become a whirlwind of personal chaos, and after Horidus’ passing, I focused entirely on what would become the final INCURSUS title.

In May 2012, after finishing his vocals for the upcoming INCURSUS EP, Horidus took his own life in VJS’ Colorado Springs rehearsal and recording studio.

VJS: I found his body, plus a brief note saying the vocals were done. Afterwards, nothing in black metal could compare. If everything had ended then, I would’ve been satisfied – it was the pinnacle of extremity. Still, the pressure mounted to make the EP our finest work. It consumed my thoughts, so I wasn’t really engaged with NIGHTBRINGER.

Horidus’ final vocal performance appears on INCURSUS’ swansong, “Adaestuo”, released by Forever Plagued Records the following year.

VJS: Continuing made no sense – our goal had always been to capture the black metal essence. But by then, we’d pushed ourselves so far that I couldn’t see how it could go any further unless I left this earth as well. Still, more remained to be done, and I’m too stubborn to die. So, “Adaestuo” became the conclusion of INCURSUS.