Rivers of Nihil, formed in Pennsylvania in the early 2010s, had already startled their world by slipping a saxophone into the heart of their technical death metal. The Work, their fourth album, pushes that hybridisation further still, to the point of blurring the borders between brutality and introspection. This is the record of a band that refuses to be confined by the genre’s codes.
The critics (an 83 average across eight reviews) hail this risk-taking. They praise the daring of a writing that alternates death-metal surges, atmospheric stretches, melancholic clean vocals and jazz flashes. The band assume a new gravity, almost disenchanted, that contrasts with the fury of their beginnings.
Musically, The Work is a record of textures and transitions: the guitars thicken then vanish, the saxophone surges like a break of light, the production carves out vast spaces in which the listener can get lost. This is a contemplative death metal, more concerned with atmosphere than with immediate impact.
That ambition has its counterpart: by dint of stretching its tracks and multiplying its ruptures, the record sometimes loses in edge what it gains in depth, and certain transitions feel more cerebral than organic. The wager, nonetheless, is largely won.
Verdict: 8/10. A courageous, singular record that unabashedly widens the field of progressive death metal.
