London metallers DAMIM are full of existential dread. So that’s nice.
With 12 years between records, you might not have heard of London extreme metallers Damim. But the sci-fi-loving existentialists could be your new favourite band
With an intense sound that is as taut and visceral as it is complex and claustrophobically intimate, Damim offer anything but a straightforward listen. Their new album, the suitably nihilistically titled
A Fine Game Of Nil, exudes confidence, comfortably straddling several branches of extreme metal while remaining crushingly heavy. Songs such as In A Language They Understand, Something For The Weakened and Body Is Broken set their foundations upon the precision of technical death metal, bombarding the listener with their twisting aggression while offering progressive flourishes, instrumental interludes, thrash touches and a dose of blackened, apocalyptic foreboding.
Though the band will be new to some, the album is actually a long-overdue addition to a discography that dates back some 20 years. Founded by Nathanael Underwood, a veteran of the London metal scene, who some will recognise as having played bass in Akercocke around their recent
comeback album Renaissance in Extremis, Damim started life under the shorter - and less search engine-friendly name ‘Dam’ in the late 90s.
Three demos later, and the band had won the attention of Candlelight, resulting in two well-received, fulllength album releases: 2005’s Purity: The Darwinian Paradox and 2007’s The Difference Engine. And then… silence. But as the founder, guitarist and vocalist is keen to point out, only if you weren’t paying attention.
“We’re actually one of the very few bands from the [UK extreme metal] scene that has been going continuously since the late 90s in one form or another,” Nathanael explains earnestly. “We might have rebranded, we might have had fluctuations in the line-up, but if you look at our gigging history you’ll see there was never much of a break – we just didn’t have the same promotional engine behind us as we might have liked. The songs that you hear today were embryonic in 2008, and what you hear is the second, and in some cases third, iteration, so it wasn’t that we weren’t working; it’s just that we took our time getting everything the best it could be.”
It’s something of an understatement, considering A Fine Game Of Nil was not only written but recorded over several years, at various locations around London and Bedfordshire, before being expertly mixed by Neil Kernon, who has worked with everyone from Cannibal Corpse and Nile to Judas
Priest and Queensrÿche. The resulting album stands comfortably alongside its predecessors, and feels like an expansion upon the band’s earlier work, offering greater dynamics and perhaps even greater ferocity.
“For this one, we kind of let Neil do his thing – it was as much a consultancy gig as a mixing gig – so he brought a lot of his experience to the sound,” says Nathanael. “The result is that it sounds more consistent and in some way it’s more modern, but at the same time we didn’t edit the material; what you hear is very accurate to the performance, it’s not one of these records where everything is edited to literal emotional death.
“Musically, A Fine Game Of Nil is a continuation in many ways of The Difference Engine and you’ll hear some of the things present – certain types of arpeggio, certain chord sequences, certain word phrasing – but you’ll also find additional layers, maybe a bit more of a Killing Joke sensibility, a bit more Coroner, a bit more 80s thrash, a bit more high singing… things that you wouldn’t necessarily expect, but also the same unrelenting extremity and focus as our favourite death and black metal albums.”
Nathanael’s mention of ‘word phrasing’ is not without significance, for Damim’s considered approach to lyrics remains one of their defining characteristics. The impassioned angst of their music is reflected in multifaceted explorations of the human condition, a subject that’s been close to the author’s heart throughout his life and career.
“There’s always going to be a strong existential questioning with what we do,” the frontman says carefully. “The title itself is an anagram of ‘a meaning of life’, and that’s a motif that can be found throughout the songs. There tend to be multiple readings to each song – forgive the overwhelming pretentiousness of that statement, but what I mean is that by virtue of the way I tend to write lyrics, you have all these layers, and I keep folding them over each other, and through the working and reworking of phrases the language shapes into new forms and you get all these new meanings that can’t be expressed any other way. You get this sort of subconscious expression that means you don’t fully appreciate everything you put into the text until you have some distance from it – the first time I listened to the songs in sequence, it actually surprised me how dark it was.”
Unusually for an extreme/ underground metal band, Damim
“YOU’LL FIND KILLING JOKE, CORONER, HIGH SINGING... AND UNRELENTING EXTREMITY”
NATHANAEL UNDERWOOD
have ventured into film to expand their means of artistic expression, creating a video for the song Rising Of The Lights – a track about the growth of artificial intelligence and its risk to humanity. Far from being a typical band promo or a straightforward translation of the song’s theme, it’s a dark and professionally created piece of science fiction, that’s purposely ambiguous and open-ended.
“That video was a reimagining of a reoccurring childhood nightmare,” explains the frontman. “The psychologically disturbing element is that, at the end of it, no one is who you think they are and the forces at play are only a suggestion of what’s sublimated. I suppose the postapocalyptic setting where the video takes place relates to song material, as it’s a potential consequence of artificial intelligence, but it’s not meant to be anything other than a visual support to listen to the song to. The other thing that’s important is that there is no performance – no bloody miming!
“It was an insane project that took months to complete and a lot of resources, but it was done for the sake of it being an end in itself. And that’s pivotal in absolutely everything we do, whether it’s a photoshoot, a video, a live show, even a meal together or an interview; each has to be its own reward, the focus is always on the thing we’re doing at the time.”
Despite the ambition of such creations, Damim eschew any gimmicks in their shows, though they’ve earned a fearsome live
reputation over the years. Their ability to effortlessly recreate their elaborate material onstage continues to impress, and reflects their ‘live’ approach to recording, the four-piece exuding an honesty and vitriol that’s hard to ignore.
“I’m supremely confident about us as a live proposition,” smiles Nathanael. “We don’t rely on theatrics, it’s more about raw performance. And I know this is a cliché, I know there are a lot of bands who will recognise themselves in this statement but… make your mind up, come and see us. You can’t fake authenticity, you can’t fake originality and you can’t fake emotion, and I genuinely think we have all these.”
“We made a video of a reCurring Childhood nightmare”
DAMIM’S A FINE GAME OF NIL IS OUT NOW VIA APOCALYPTIC WITCHCRAFT RECORDINGS. SEE MORE AT WWW.DAMIM.UK