Review Summary: Aggressive debut album new British black metal duo
In modern times the black metal scene has become saturated with a rise in new bands. As a result of this the scene has had a massive influx in releases and bands vying for positions in the relatively small spot light. One of the bands rising from this entropy of new projects is Sheffield's own 'Nokturnal Ritual', who arrived on the scene this year with their debut album
'Ushering a New Era of Agony'.
'Ushering...' is an album that draws great inspiration from the Scandinavian scene from the 90s, drawing influences from bands such as Mayhem, Marduk and Satyricon to create a sound that is harsh and riff heavy. The guitars are chainsaw thin and very aggressive, and have a good variety of styles employed, be they heavy, doom laden riffs such as on song
'Nokturnal Ritual', to classic riffing (
'Sons of Belial' to classic black metal tremolo picking such as
'The Goatlord Is Approaching'. The songs are flowing in structure, moving from riff to riff, to lead to lead, evolving the songs along, allowing them to move and develop as they progress. The two members of this band, Karhmul (also in Abandoned by Light) on vocals and guitar, and Kadavr (ex-Arendia guitarist), who does guitar, drums, bass and flute, are both tight when playing together. The bass in this album is interesting, sometimes it does follow the guitar, but for the majority of times it is playing an independent melody to the guitar, adding an extra dimension to the songs, which does make it more interesting than a lot of bass parts in many albums.
The biggest issue is the noticeably programmed drumming which, while better than many commonly used drum machines, still detracts from the overall sound. The other issue is the vocals, which, whilst not bad amongst the genre, do lack a certain impact, they have an impact in the songs. They do sound harsh and aggressive but they lack a certain power when they appear in the songs, this is likely to be an issue with the production removing the overall impact of the vocals.
Overall, this is a decent debut from a new black metal band, the songs are powerful, aggressive, in your face black metal tracks with a lot of variation and dynamics. It may not be perfect, or even album of the year, but for fans of black metal in the vein of the Scandinavian 90s scene, Nokturnal Ritual is definitely worth checking out.
