The Great Nasum Revisted in Dune

You like Nasum? You happy to settle with a Nasum like sound? If so then check out Sayyadina, and if you like what you hear you will be happy to know that Relapse Records have released a compilation of some hard to get Sayyadina material. If the word Ex-Nasum were not enough to spark your interest in Sayyadina, then let me say a few more General Surgery and Victims(To be fair I have never heard of the Victims, but I am told they are good), well with this sort of line up your brain must be tweaking to check them out. For those still clueless at the title then I shall explain, the album to be reviewed is called The Great Northern Revisited, but due to the parrallels with Nasum, I have opted for the The Great Nasum Revisited, and the in Dune  is a reference to Sayyadina itself. The well known book Dune, has a term called Sayyadina that means "friend of God". Voila, onward with the Review!

I am ashamed to say that it is only in 2009 I first ever heard Sayyadina, and even then I didn't bother to check them out, they laid among my library of music unheard and unappreciated until many months ago, but even though I liked what I heard, it was pushed aside to be replaced by Abuse, GrindVirus and Time Waits for No Slave. However all good things come to those who wait, about a week ago I got my hands on this release, and I let it roll and I was certainly impressed.
Don't be fooled by the black metal style album art, this release is 100% grindcore. I personally like the album art, I don't think it is representative of the musical content inside, but it is pretty sweet as a an album art. I suppose being Scandinavian there possibly may be a high level of Black Metal Influence, although this is not apparent in the Music.
The Hardcore Punk influence is really visible in this release, so although it is 100% grindcore, it shifts more towards the Punkier side of things than it does to the metal. The metal side of things is not neglected though, and they constantly produce this solid sound greatly similair to Nasum, but not quite acheive the full blown Nasum effect. It is sort of the frame and some elements of Nasum tied in with more "heavier" elements taken from Hardcore Punk: namely Crust Punk in my opinion. Just like Nasum there are elements that are somewhat more melodic than your typical grindcore release, In my opinion this was Nasum's strongest point and is nice to see they have learnt from the success of Nasum to incorporate this into their music.
It is not frequent as I would like, however the likelihood is that if it was then this would be another Nasum clone like Afgrund, so perhaps this is good that they retain their unique musical identity, without sacrificing quality of musical ability.
Given that I enjoyed the entire album from beginning to end, I actually look forward to seeing more stuff from these guys, hopefully not at the expense of their other bands (I do like General Surgery). I do think it is a shame that their first few releases where neglected not only by me, but the whole Grindcore community on the whole. On my trawls through the vast web known as the internet, I have noticed that this band are becoming more popular by the day. It really does seem that Sweden is becoming a hub for all manner of metal: Regurgitate, Afgrund, Birdflesh, Coldworker and Nasum, and this is just Grindcore, let alone all the death, melodeath and black metal bands.
So all in all you can summarise this album with one question: would you like a more hardcore orientated, heavier take on Nasum? If yes then this is the album for you, If no then go back and listen to Nasum for an hour and go back to the question, repeat until your answer is yes.
Rating: 84/100

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