Bands & Artists - Anaal Nathrakh

Biography

Anaal Nathrakh is a metal band formed in Birmingham, UK in 1999 that fuse industrial and grindcore elements into an underlying black metal style. The band is signed to Feto Records, which is run by Anaal Nathrakh's Mick Kenney and Shane Embury (Napalm Death, Brujeria, Lock Up, Venomous Concept) The name comes from Merlin's Charm of Making in John Boorman's Excalibur (1981). Given Michael Everson's transcription, Anaal Nathrakh means "serpent's breath". Anaal Nathrakh is typically described as black metal, despite eschewing the aesthetic of many black metal bands, dressing in a casual manner, as opposed to the theatrical corpsepaint and spiked leather clothing traditionally favored by the black metal subculture. The band originally started as a raw black metal band, but soon changed to blackened grindcore. Through the use of distorted samples, sound effects and programmed drums, much of its work also falls into the industrial metal category, though the band uses no keyboards. Lyrics are not published, and, prior to their employment of clean vocals, facetious rumors abounded that the band didn't have any actual lyrics since the vocals were completely incomprehensible. But from the song titles, increasingly common clean passages, and information given in interviews, the band's work seems to revolve around apocalyptic themes, the nature of mortality, and misanthropy. Anaal Nathrakh, like many black metal bands, draw much inspiration from the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche, exemplified by such song titles as "Human, All Too Fucking Human" and "Revaluation of All Values." Band members: Irrumator (Michael Kenney) (Frost, Mistress, Exploder, Professor Fate) - Bass, guitar, drums V.I.T.R.I.O.L. (Dave Hunt) (Benediction, Mistress) - Vocals User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License and may also be available under the GNU FDL.