adg211288 Nihaihayat (2013) is the fourth full-length album to be released by Turkish black metal act Yayla. A one man act consisting of Emir Toğrul, who performs the vocals, guitars, bass and keyboards, as well as programming the drums, Yayla is quickly becoming apparent as quite the productive act since the first album, Ruhizolasyon, was released as recently as 2011.

Nihaihayat is my first encountered with Yayla, and unfortunately it’s one of those albums which has given me cause to seriously consider making it my last. While some artists can pull off being extra productive, others seem to spread their good ideas to thin and just drop sub-par album after sub-par album. Having not heard them I cannot comment on the quality of the previous three releases by Yayla, but Nihaihayat suggests to me that the act is among the latter cases, despite not being anyway near as productive as acts like Senmuth or Nadja.

The music here mostly fits within the atmospheric black metal vein and I draw instant comparisons to acts like Burzum due to Yayla’s inclusion to fully ambient pieces. The album kicks off with such a track, Integumental Grasp and it honestly isn’t too bad. But after this, when the metal finally kicks in with Through the Sigil of Hate, things just fall apart. Yayla’s take on black metal is some of the most lo-fi I have ever encountered. So raw and bad are the production values that very little aspects about the music on the album can be discerned. The vocals are indistinguishable and can very rarely even be heard, the music repetitive to the point of being beyond a joke, something with is heightened by excessive song lengths exceeding the ten minute mark, resulting in one big, messy and fuzzy haze that is only vaguely recognisable as music at all. It has a very slight atmospheric quality to it, but it’s not an atmosphere I want to immerse myself in the way I want to do with a good Fen, Wodensthrone or Falls of Rauros album.

Another ambient piece, In Senility, closes the album, but it’s too late by this stage to offer any real sort of redemption for Nihaihayat. This is after all supposed to be a black metal album, and on that score it just happens to be one of the worst I have ever heard. A couple of half decent ambient tracks do not reflect the overall quality of a metal album. They do save Nihaihayat from an absolutely bottom tier rating, but does that mean I can recommend it even a little? Nope, not really. If Emir Toğrul turned Yayla into a pure ambient project then there may be some hope for his music, but as it stands I think I’ll struggle to find a weaker album this year if I’m brutally honest.

15/100

(Originally written for Heavy Metal Haven: http://metaltube.freeforums.org/yayla-nihaihayat-t3005.html)

J-Man Released in early 2013, Nihaihayat is the fourth offering of bleakness and despair from one-man ambient black metal act Yayla. Yayla is the brainchild of Turkish musician Emir Toğrul, who plays all of the instruments here in addition to composing the material. Although Yayla has released four albums over the past two years, Nihaihayat is my introduction to its music - and, if truth be told, I can't say I was won over quite as much as some other reviewers. One-man ambient black metal acts are a dime a dozen these days, and although Nihaihayat does some things right, it doesn't establish Yayla as one of the genre's more memorable acts as far as I'm concerned.

Borrowing plenty of inspiration from the template illustrated by Burzum on albums like Filosofem and Hvis Lyset Tar Oss, Nihaihayat is a very repetitive album with minimalistic production values, foreboding atmospheres, ambient sections, and fairly sloppy musicianship. This isn't an album for those into more aggressive forms of black metal; the primary focus of Yayla's music seems to create a desolate atmosphere, and in that regard, it certainly succeeds. The entire observation (which lasts for nearly 52 minutes) creates a feeling of claustrophobia and loneliness in its listener, and I have no doubt that Emir Toğrul intended for these emotions to evoked. My biggest gripe with Nihaihayat is that it is just too long and repetitive, as the album's lengthy running time leads to a fair amount of boredom towards the second half - the riffs here simply don't have the same level of memorability as a classic Burzum or Darkthrone record, and their heavy repetition can make for a rather disengaging listen. The drum programming is also a bit of a downer, although the production is so lo-fi that it might be hard to notice unless you've previously read lineup information.

The ambient portions of Nihaihayat are well-executed (the opening track “Integumental Grasp” sets the mood for the album perfectly), but the black metal feels rather sloppy and sub-par to these ears. Though it is undoubtedly effective in its atmosphere, the album fails to captivate me as a listener and will often times leave me bored and uninterested. Fans of ambient black metal in the vein of Burzum might want to check this out, but I personally don't find the level of quality here to be within the same league.