Romanticism, deathlike fantasies and world collapse – such are the images presented to us of death metal band Nokturnal from Indonesia. The horror element which is paraded conjures up Tribulation, to whose fans Nokturnal are said to appeal.
In truth, before embarking on “Shades of Night” I knew nothing whatsoever about this band apart from the above. The album starts with “Bewail the Fallen Light”, a truly atmospheric track. After a calm opening evoking a lush soundscape, the mood becomes doomy and sinister. “Bewail the Fallen Light” is instrumental but it needs no words. It’s creepy, sad and dark …. The sound of horror, perhaps. The mood changes with “Dagger of Will”. This is more death-thrash, black even. The sound is decidedly old school and murky. Unless they’ve been very subtle and it’s some kind of double bluff, I don’t get the impression that not too much attention has been paid to sharp production. Although from the other side of the world, this reminds me of some of the Polish bands I listen to – straight down your throat and harsh. There’s a powerful breakdown towards the end. “Chainless Soul” starts like a march and continues to tread an impressively deathly path. “By the Nightside” is as it suggests: shadowy and menacing. Our raucous deathmeister vocalist comes in to spread disease and horror as the instrumentalists crank up to something psychedelic and nasty, but something also to marvel at. Horror fills the air with sinister sounds and screams. “Blood and Valour” then is harsh death metal attack. The rhythm line is strong and in spite of its pretensions to death, it’s a melodically toe-tapping experience, interrupted by rougher outbursts and instrumental excursions into dark and jungly territory. Nine minutes in length, it’s a carefully and cleverly constructed journey into dark places. The band name is spot-on.
The weirdest thing on this album is a cover of Sam Gopal’s “Cold Embrace”, a psychedelic rock song which was released in 1969 and is one of those songs you’d immediately associate with being straight out of the 1960s. Its other claim to fame is that Lemmy was part of the band around this time. Well, all credit is due to Nokturnal. They’ve managed in this cover to get that psychedelically fuzzy sound while not sounding like something recorded in the 1960s, which would be ridiculous. Moreover they’ve put their stamp on this song while retaining a hard rock groove. Then towards the end we enter the cosmos, Hawkwind style. It makes for a superbly atmospheric ending. This cover of “Cold Embrace” was the highlight of this album for me.
The word that comes to my mind when summing this up is retro. There are lots of constituent parts – a call out to the days of psychedelic rock, death metal and horror. The sounds are grainy, the grooves are good and although as an album I found “Shades of Night” a bit all over the place, it has character and life about it.
(7.5/10 Andrew Doherty)
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