**Note** I guess I should have searched a little deeper but here is what Nephelium had to say about the Wikipedia reference below: “By the way (and just for the record) our name does not come from flowering plants, but from the Nephelium who were the offspring of fallen angels and human women. More on that here :http://www.alien-ufos.com/​paranormal-consciousness-dr​eams-hypnosis/​26065-nephelium.html”  My apologies to the band for that mistake!

According to Wikipedia: “Nephelium is a genus of about 25 species of flowering plants in the family Sapindaceae, native to southeastern Asia.”

This sounds fucking brutal for a death metal band name, right? Well, not really you might say. If you stick only with the idea of the plant I have to say that you are probably right, but when it comes to Toronto’s Nephelium, they make it sound completely mean and savage! They make you simply forget about that plant with their absolutely amazing debut album “Coils of Entropy”, which is coming out today February 7th 2012. I say finally because after more than 10 years of existence and many line-up changes, we now have the pleasure to get our hands on this album, which was definitely worth the wait.

Ok, first thing first. There is a lot of talk about this band coming from Dubai and how the music was influenced by this fact but honestly, the only place where I heard a slight Middle Eastern influence was with the guitar solo on the title track of the album, “Coils of Entropy”. Other than that, I regret to say that the Middle East influences are as obvious as they are on a Cannibal Corpse album. There, I said it! Now that this is out of the way, we can move on to talk about how great this album really is!

“Coils of Entropy” is pure old school brutal death metal in the same vein as Suffocation. All the ingredients are gathered here to create one of the best death metal album I heard in a while: the vocals performed by Devlin Anderson are so deep, low and guttural, they are the definition of death metal vocals. Alan Madhavan on drums is also a key player and adds dynamics to the overall atmosphere by doing a lot of changes with the rythms and styles throughout the album; going from blast beats to mid paced sections and using a lot of creativity. The guitars are also playing their parts here by delivering their riffs with just the right dosage of technicity. The guys from Nephelium are not here to show off with tons of useless complicated stuff, they’re here to give us very well done and right to the point death metal. All those things put together make an album that doesn’t get repetitious and boring even when the songs length reaches 8-10 minutes.

Nephelium have created an energetic and vigorous album, constant from start to finish. “Coils of Entropy” should satisfy the needs of any old school death metal fans out there. The only thing I can wish for now is that their sophomore album doesn’t take 10 years to come out!

Nephelium – “Coils of Entropy”

1- Burial Ground – 5:04
2- Merciless Annihilation – 6:17
3- Hellborne – 5:02
4- Malediction – 8:52
5- Halls of Judgment – 5:56
6- Coils of Entropy – 10:05

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