While information has kind of been out there for a month, Chicago psych/black metal band Nachtmystium are on hiatus. Frontman and founder Blake Judd stated in an interview with Stereogum last month that he’s decided to concentrate on Hate Meditation. Back in March, Judd was interviewed for Stereogum about Hate Meditation, and stated that Nachtmystium was “on somewhat of a hiatus for the time being.” Since then, the band’s Facebook page has disappeared and a European tour scheduled has been cancelled, with the following explanation:
“We are sorry to inform you that Nachtmystium have decided to cancel all their live activities in the foreseeable future. The band has parted ways with their long time lead guitarist, Andrew Markuszewski, and their recording engineer/synth player, Sanford Parker. The remaining three band members of Nachtmystium as of today are going to bring the band to a state of hiatus.”
Metal Sucks brings up the fact that Judd is pretty much the only constant in the band anyway. Markuszewski only played on the band’s most recent album, Silencing Machine, and they’d toured without keyboard players before. But essentially, the band had been releasing an album every two years since 2002, so maybe they just got burned out on doing that. What we’re hearing so far from Hate Meditation sounds a lot more like traditional black metal than the experimental psychedelia of Nachtmystium’s two Black Meddle albums. You’ll get to hear the whole album, Scars, on May 24 when it’s released on Norway’s Indie Recordings.
