Review Summary: All in all, this is an excellent release, fans of the modern day extreme music scene will like this, and people who have been following TBDM since Unhallowed will love it even more. People who love them some bass might be a little disappointed, but this r
In today's modern extreme music, many bands have surfaced. Among these bands are the Michigan Melodic Death Metal act, The Black Dahlia Murder. Prior to their third album, they had a rather metalcore sound and weren't very well known, however all this was about to change. The band developed their third album, Nocturnal, in September 2007 and this album was the album that proved to the extreme music world that TBDM didn't deserve to be compared with bands such as Job for a Cowboy.
The album as a whole is simply great, the solos and riffs are very well put together and although songs like "Everything Went Black" and "What A Horrible Night To Have A Curse" are simply what TBDM does best, songs like "To A Breathless Oblivion" and "Warborn" are much slower paced and dark. The drumming is solid, Shannon Lucas does blast beats very well and does some cool fills in songs like "Deathmask Divine." Vocalist Trevor Strnad's vocals are at their prime, with the ability to go from a shrieking high to a very deep low quickly, and his lyrics have also improved. The lyrics on "Everything Went Black" are about a black hole swallowing a planet and the lyrics on "What A Horrible Night To Have A Curse" tell the storyline in the video game Castlevania 2: Simon's Quest with a dark, Death Metal atmosphere. While the lyrics in most of the album are brutal, there are some very emotional lyrics in songs like "To A Breathless Oblivion," which are about suicide:
"The chair's been kicked, a rope tied to the rafters
Blue-faced and broken-necked, I sigh
Relieving my vision from the sick mocking stare of that hated sun burning the sky
Slumped like a headless scarecrow, cold and limp against the wall
Blood paints a pattern of Rorschach's design, thawing the winter that burdens this heart"
Very emotional and dark lyrics if you ask me.
Although this is a superb album, it doesn't deserve a perfect 5, simply because as far as bass goes, it falls short. I can't even hear the bass with most modern bands, sadly, this is one of those bands. I'm sure the bass is well done, but it isn't audible, which is something they need to work on in future works
