Nachtmystium

One of the American black-metal scene’s leading (and darkest) lights, Chicago’s Nachtmystium posits what Meddle-era Pink Floyd might’ve sounded like with corpse paint and homespun production values, with all manner of weird (and frequently beautiful) acoustic-guitar passages, EBow moans, and synthesizer burbles seeping into its dark, atmospheric stew. On 2008's Assassins: Black Meddle Part I, Blake Judd and his cohorts took a sharp turn into prog metal, and the follow-up, this year’s Part II, veers even further into melodies that can trace a lineage from the new wave of British heavy metal to the Scandinavian gloom of Celtic Frost, propelled by rhythms that are closer to European industrial metal than anything else.

Updated 08/30/2010