Nocturnal Torment - They Come At Night
Originally known as Termination way back in 1989, they changed their name to Nocturnal Torment when they reformed around 2008, thus ‘They Come At Night’ is actually their debut album release from this US death metal quartet. The style of death metal involves gore, and a heavy similarity to Malevolent Creation, but with a SweDeath guitar tone. The opener ‘Vile Affliction’ is a confusing mass of ‘Left Hand Path’ meets Possessed and some of the other US forerunners of both thrash and death metal from the early to mid-1980’s. It is this frequent genre hopping that makes me feel a little confused. The songs are rather busy, there are numerous ideas flowing around the place, but I for one would prefer a sound that concentrated on a consistent entity, the busyness continues to a lesser extent with ‘Alternative Reality’. On this, hmm, vocally, no, it doesn’t work, it’s too muffled, I hate vocal barking, vocal growls are much more palatable and have more clarity for me.
‘Bleeding’ takes me to Benediction of old, with Barney Greenway’s vocals. It has that similar shattering enigma, lots of running riffs, drum fills and absolute power of fast death metal picking. The finger tapping lead break sounds odd, it is in a much higher tone to the remaining belt and braces violent tirade. The d-beat pounding after this section creates a sense of security before Nocturnal Torment totally blow your mind with some furious death/grind, but I just comes across as a band trying to put everything they have gained in experience over the last 20 odd years into just short of 7 minutes. These could have been additional tracks, there is a point where you hang a song out for too long, the listener gets disinterested, and this is what happens to me in many cases when I play ‘They Come At Night’.
Cluster bombing your speakers is ‘Fresh Flesh Fetish’, there is clear momentum, its sounds very old school, very violent, is it good… yes! It is fair to say the Nocturnal Torment have rather a few ideas, not one riff is repeatable, or hangs around too long for boredom to set in, but I would say that perhaps this frequency step up and down and change of pace and style makes this a rather hard album to follow. I have not felt comfortable with this recording at all, just as a happy medium is set, Nocturnal Torment throw some more curveball’s your way. This may sound like clever musicianship, but what it does for me is make me feel rushed when I listen to it, if you enjoy one piece of music too much, you feel cheated when the band take you to another area of their death metal influences.
‘Bleeding’ takes me to Benediction of old, with Barney Greenway’s vocals. It has that similar shattering enigma, lots of running riffs, drum fills and absolute power of fast death metal picking. The finger tapping lead break sounds odd, it is in a much higher tone to the remaining belt and braces violent tirade. The d-beat pounding after this section creates a sense of security before Nocturnal Torment totally blow your mind with some furious death/grind, but I just comes across as a band trying to put everything they have gained in experience over the last 20 odd years into just short of 7 minutes. These could have been additional tracks, there is a point where you hang a song out for too long, the listener gets disinterested, and this is what happens to me in many cases when I play ‘They Come At Night’.
Cluster bombing your speakers is ‘Fresh Flesh Fetish’, there is clear momentum, its sounds very old school, very violent, is it good… yes! It is fair to say the Nocturnal Torment have rather a few ideas, not one riff is repeatable, or hangs around too long for boredom to set in, but I would say that perhaps this frequency step up and down and change of pace and style makes this a rather hard album to follow. I have not felt comfortable with this recording at all, just as a happy medium is set, Nocturnal Torment throw some more curveball’s your way. This may sound like clever musicianship, but what it does for me is make me feel rushed when I listen to it, if you enjoy one piece of music too much, you feel cheated when the band take you to another area of their death metal influences.
- Vile Affliction
- Alternative Reality
- Cycle Of Life
- Fresh Flesh Fetish
- Bleeding
- Sweet Decay
- Forever Eternal Darkness
- They Come At Night
- Primordial Existence
Label: http://www.deathgasm.com
Reviewer: twansibon
Apr 11, 2012
Apr 11, 2012
Next review:
Massive Assault - Death Strike
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