"The splintered, protean Hannover coven known as Merkwürdig Riechnerv transformed Ligeti knots into innovative gestures of abrupt typology; their predilection for chopped and reticulated motion - arresting, recurring manifestations of subterraneous chromaticism - drastically modified the hearing of audience members more accustomed to dated "brutal" norms, and extended hitherto incompatible apparitions of psychological collage. They questioned the threads from which traditions are weaved, supplementing staid herringbone with strands of distorted Berg and discolored Mahler; they quoted crypto-rhythmic surrealist mythologies and staggered illusionist architectures.

Tom Smith began assembling the Nakonxipanian idiologues in early 2012 under the "Merkwürdig Riechen" banner, initially in a duo formation with fellow American expatriot Luke Calzonetti (who'd recently exited Child Abuse, the fervent, Escheresque partisans he'd helped found). This constellation was snatched up and bundled off by anomie in mid-2015. (Calzonetti, since late 2012, had been enjoying solo success as Run Dust, and Smith, beginning in early 2013, had begun his anxiety-aggrandizing T/SMS project. With To Live and Shave in L.A.'s resumption of touring and recording in late 2014, there wasn't much time for Merkwürdig Riechen's fusillades. Cut to late 2015: Smith, presumably sated from the precarious and hysterical terrors engendered by the Amercian and European tours of the TLASILA clot that recorded "As Gods Are Skinned" for Independent Woman Records, nonetheless again set the Boschean mill in motion, resuscitating Riechen as Riechnerv ("smell" became "olfactory nerve"). With assistants in tow, Smith steered MR to the precipice of the apocalyptic, but their ascension (at a prestigious October 2019 festival in Bremen) was sabotaged when a bassist revealed that a house pet was ailing, and a vocalist complained of cosmogonic discomfort. Neither could muster the strength to attend the event to which they’d been invited. The full truth was soon revealed, however - the vocalist had just flat-our made made other plans. The group died the moment Smith read their texts.
A studio album had been begun - nine compositions were recorded during the initial session; a second affixed overdubs. Mixes were created, but the album still wasn't quite ready. After Smith ended the project, he moped around for a month and a half, then contacted Lurch (Guttersnipe, To Live and Shave in L.A.) and Paige A. Flash (Laundryroom Squelchers, Cult of Youth). NM Meth was thus formed. Following the completion of NHM's debut album, "Unknown Gen" (also available on Independent Woman), Smith revisited Merkwürdig Riechnerv's unfinished collection, which was thereafter known as "MR ist der Tod" ("MR Is Death"). "I remixed the lot," he revealed to French zine 108/101, "strengthening its structures, adding backing vocalists to several of its tracks, enhancing its depth of field and just fucking trying to give this malformed ghoul of group its due, despite its pitiably ignimonious end." A tenth composition, the album's title track, was demoed for the ensemble but never properly recorded. It completes "MR ist der Tod" and slams the sarcophagus shut on a group that should have gone global but ended up immobile. Such is the stench of the pursuit of sacred shocks.

- Vikram, Latin Declension (Spring 2021)