When The Absolute came out in 2010, it had been something like ten years since I'd heard anything new from the American death industrial outfit En Nihil. Since then, Adam Fritz's project has produced a bunch of new releases that have been pretty impressive, but this seven-song disc is still the heaviest thing that this guy has done. Much like Midwestern death industrialist Gnawed, there is this massive percussive power to the tracks on The Absolute that give this an almost industrial-metal like feel, with massive robotic rhythms, grinding ultra-distorted synths, brutal, bestial vocals carved into hypnotic vomitous mantras, and some seriously punishing bass. The opening title track comes right in and stomps a hole through your head with its ridiculously crushing industrial dirge; with zero warning, En Nihil unleashes this bulldozing mechanical doomblast across distorted machine-noise loops, distorted voices, distorted bass, resembling some mutant industrial doom outfit where the drums have been replaced with pneumatic death-machines, the bass a slithering Godfleshian throb beneath the snarling black power electronics, the sound of tribal drumming buried in the background, drowning in electronic filth. Jesus, does this rule. Other tracks sound like symphonies of oil-drum percussionists hammering away on rusted metal, massive rumbling walls of pounding metallic power that reverberate behind layer upon layer of searing droning feedback, while others like "Crown of Nothing" bathe massive distorted mecha-loops in waves of black distortion and sinister minor-key doomriffs, or drift into vast chasms of abyssal, orchestral ambience found in "Nonlight". It all culminates with the twelve-minute closer "Everything Ends (In Decay)", an awesome roiling mass of ghastly ambient noise that layers demonic gasps and distant machine noises with rumbling black drones, doom-laden bass and some beautifully eerie piano that materializes towards the end, infecting this morbid ambience with a single faint ray of mournful light.

The Absolute is easily the heaviest thing I've heard from En Nihil, a crushing, grinding industrial deathscape that almost feels as if you're listening to something like Streetcleaner or Wound chopped n' screwed into a mangled, murky mass of jet-black factory crush and choking static, doused in a horrific, inescapable atmosphere of total dissolution. If you dug that recent full-length that En Nihil did for Eibon, you'll definitely want to get this as well. Highly recommended.