AMN Reviews: Nihil Impvlse – The Great Filter (2025; Eighth Tower Records)
Historically, every major revolution in communications technology has been followed by a period of unrest. The printing press fueled sectarian dissent, contributing to significant social friction, religious wars, and the proliferation of misinformation. Radio, and to a limited extent television, were used by fascist regimes to disseminate propaganda, ultimately playing a key role in mobilizing public support for the policies that paved the way for World War II.
In the last 15 years, humanity has arguably endured three rapid, successive shifts in communications and one major societal upheaval. The revolutions were the simultaneous rise of smartphones and social media in the 2010s and then the widespread availability of powerful generative AI in the 2020s. The upheaval was the coronavirus pandemic, which had a deleterious impact on the mental health of a significant portion of the population. The outcome of these events so far involves empowerment of the few and profound societal fragmentation.
The Great Filter pokes at these concepts. The album’s title is a reference to a theory addressing the Fermi Paradox by positing that nearly all civilizations self-destruct before they can become interstellar. Nihil Impvlse frames the theory in terms of a self-engineered apocalypse involving accelerationism (dismantling the status quo to achieve transcendence), nihilism (fatalistic acceptance on one’s own obsolesce), and simulacra (a world full of chatbots, deepfakes, and digital misinformation). Thus, the album asks questions related to whether our current set of disruptions are what drive humanity – with access to machines more powerful than ever – from the edge of stunning technological advances to a new dark age. Or extinction.
The music of Nihil Impvlse has always been dense with ideas, and The Great Filter maintains this grounding. Each piece employs a slightly different sonic palette of building blocks that are used to represent both construction and destruction. Throughout, structures are layered upon one another and torn apart, not unlike society in the Great Filter theory.
On Trigger Mass Event, bouncing and skittering tones are slowly subsumed by electromechanical noises with static on the spectrum from hazy to harsh. Beneath this, and beneath many of the other tracks on the album, is a roiling mass of white noise that seems to represent decay of digital memories. What remains is a long, slow drone that ends with a voiceover from Carl Sagan warning about the dangers of those with power being ignorant about science and technology.
Spectral Engravings continues these themes with staccato bursts of electronic noises over gritty masses of sound and underlying drones. Lilting bell-like percussion travel with dark growling and spacious synth lines. Datacarrion exhibits percussive clusters of noise and chromatic sweeps, along with retro chirps and sequenced rhythms.
For A Cruel Eschatology takes things down a few notches in terms of tempo and volume, focusing on a slow, ominous drone that is eventually called into contrast by buzzing textures that move back and forth across the spatial domain. Catastrophe, Reprocessed finishes the album with another quiet start. A strident yet indecipherable spoken word passage atop long-held chords reflects a post-apocalyptic nightmare of isolation and doom.
The Great Filter is full of tension and abrasiveness. It is another high point for Nihil Impvlse, an artist who is quietly (or noisily in this case) building a formidable discography. The album was released November 27, 2025 by Eighth Tower Records.
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