The old values of nordic Black Metal are held high by more and more upcoming bands these days again. NEHËMAH from our neighbour country France are one of them doing so and they have definitely found the right feeling to convince the listener right away. After the fiery a very moodladen intro ‘The Witch Burns…’ NEHËMAH strike forth with an uptempo crossbreaker in the vein of early IMMORTAL an alikes, including a kind of Chinese gong and some cool bass guitar parts. Afterwards they enchant with a gloomy midtempo landscape using this great atmospheric "old school" keyboardsound in the background we know of e.g. early EMPEROR or GEHENNA. Next song starts as a midtempo hymn again before it shortly changes into a furios highspeed part. With ‘Nehëmah In Vulva Infernum’ you get a real bombastic hymn of depression and desolation whose emotional and sorrowful melodies rip your soul apart. All in all a fine blend of slow, midtempo and fast compositions is what you get on NEHËMAH’s debut (?) album. To sum it up NEHËMAH stand for cold, grim, atmospheric, eery, dark, obscure and desolate Black Metal. The production is rough and shredding, but always contains enough room to discover the (partly unusual) details. The rough and powerful vocals are coming from somewhere out of the middleground like out of a thick field of frosty fog. Eventhough NEHËMAH do not redefine the term Black Metal (which surely was not the aim and from my point of view is not necessary either) they have released a great bunch of quality compositions (in contrast to the newer releases of the "big" bands from Norway). If early(!) IMMORTAL, EMPEROR, GEHENNA, DARKTHRONE or CARPATHIAN FOREST belong to your faves you better check this album out.