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Hailing from the blasted landscapes of Iceland, Nexion play a murky brand of Black/Death on their debut full-length that takes the intensity and heaviness of the latter and mixes in the melodic sensibility and frigid atmosphere of the former. For a debut, this is surprisingly professional in terms of musicianship and songwriting, with plenty of intensity and a surprising amount of light and shade found throughout. The songs are mostly made up of thugging riffs and blasty tremolo segments, but they occasionally slow down for more melodic sections like on the end of the closing track "The Last Messiah", and I honestly think these stand out a lot more than the typical blasting found on the rest of the album. The songs do go on longer than they need to, however, and despite some surprising technicality to the musicianship, they don't really stand out much from one another. I like this, and there's a lot of promise on here for future releases, but I wouldn't call it mandatory listening.