Nocturnal Blood - Devastated Graves: The Morbid Celebration (2010)

I'm going to clear the cemetery air here up front here and admit that my appreciation for Devastated Graves: The Morbid Celebration comes at the cost of my usual criteria. Not because it's bad, because it's not even remotely bad, but for the fact it exists within a realm where innovative riffing is just a fable, as if sole survivor Ghastly Apparition (formerly Nocturnal Ghoul, Spirit of Darkness) mocks such a prospect. Since I'm normally a huge fan of guitars, and the interesting things men and women do with them, I should sneer at this and the damned burial mound it shambled out of. Strangely enough, that turns out not to be the case at all, and as with the Invocation of Spirits EP and Imperial Impurity split (with Sanguis Imperem) releases from earlier in the year, I found this debut pretty satisfying for all the right and wrong reasons, as if the sheer, primitive atmosphere alone stirs up the dust motes from the tomb of death metal's still festering corpse and the headstone is removed to reveal a shit eating, worm hollowed grin.

Nocturnal Blood is a project exuding some of the sickest death metal in our nation, but it's quite secular from the horde of ravenous technical beasts we generally associate with the Californian scene. You're not going to find sweeping, myriad tempo shifts, acrobatic drumming and frenzied guitar work. These are the sorts of riffs envisioned back in the heyday of the genre, when it was just enough to summon up an extreme guitar tone, a few crude oil patterned riffs, and guttural vocals that offer nothing but the stale breath of the underworld. The production is kept blissfully raw, at demo level or below. True, this approach might frighten away the legions of masturbatory wank-officers who have no interest in anything besides nerdy precision and algebraic theory accompanied by monotonous, percussive gutturals, but it's not as if Ghastly leaves this a barren, dull plot of grave dirt. The churning guitars bellow out against both blasted and slower rock beats as if they were the very process of natural putrescence, the vocals soar and echo like desperate, dying ghouls bleeding their last into the uncaring, frosted night.

The album does initially carry a sense that if you've heard one track, you've heard them all, especially if you've already exposed yourself to Nocturnal Blood's previous works. But when you listen in at a deeper level, beyond the brightness of evolutionary expectations, below the critical din of novelty, then the sodden, ruptured earth begins to suck at your heels, and the decomposition process begins. "Devastated Graves" offers only a sliver of tonal black ambiance before the guitars erupt, the throat howls, and that's about the only deviation from the carnage (aside from another brief intro to "Chaos Blood" and the faint far slope of closer "Triumph of Impurity"). Tracks like "Death Calls", "Ghouls Wrath" and the doom driven "Ritual Lust" are disgusting, godless wads of bitter, bile drenched flesh, choking in their own trails of horrific viscera. The leads serve as nothing more than wailing specters of sporadic anguish, bats and harpies escaping the clutch of the sepulcher before the gates are shut forever, and the drumming throughout the album is nonchalant, primal, and live as if you were listening to it through a rehearsal room wall.

Stylistically, the overall atmosphere seems to thrust into some obscure dimension between the carnal abandon of old Incantation and Autopsy, and the brackish black bog of Hellhammer and the first few Bathory records. The churning guitar tone is most reminiscent of ancient Swedish acts, like some simpleton cousin to Entombed's Left Hand Path. I would have enjoyed a little more bass in the mix, and perhaps some additional segues into morbid ambiance, which would have created an even stiffer sense of necrosis (even some numbing synthesizers might have worked miracles), but I can see how these things might be considered diversions from the very source of suffering. The seven tracks here offer little more than a decrepit mirror to the primitive past, but a mirror through which the tangible taint of the old school can be summoned into our present and future, like a black cloud of sulfur settling upon the magnet of your flesh, stinking the remainder of your days. Seeing that these sort of regressions are increasing in popularity of late, I really hope Nocturnal Blood will find its audience, whether that consists of the elderly purist or the slovenly newcomer who 'gets it'.

Verdict: Win [8/10]

http://www.thewrathofxhaos.com/

Sanguis Imperem & Nocturnal Blood - Imperial Impurity SPLIT (2010)

Normally my exposure to Californian death metal consists of either high quality Carcass worship (i.e Exhumed, Impaled) or a slew of consistent and technical fare with its finger on the pulse of today's current edge of brutality (i.e. Severed Savior, Deeds of Flesh, Odious Mortem, Sepsism, The Faceless, the list goes on). It throws me off my game a little to hear two downright old school bands like Sanguis Imperem & Nocturnal Blood from the same place, but hey, it's an enormous state, and there are plenty of killing grounds for everyone.

This is one of the better match ups for a split release I've heard of late, because both acts walk a very similar path, though not to a fault that you'd be unable to distinguish them from one another. Sanguis Imperem has a slightly more warlike, in the face death tendency while Nocturnal Blood is more about invoking sheer horror through the level of atmosphere placed alongside the riffs. I won't lie, the writing is incredibly simplistic, to a level that many bands could assert by simply plugging in and jamming out the first things that come to mind. Neither of these bands is bent on establishing virtuoso credential for itself, they just want to play death metal the way it once reigned, and a listener's enjoyment will rely largely on the extent to which he or she can ignore any lack of nuance or progression. That being said, if you are fond of the morbid old regime of Entombed, Autopsy, Grave, Obituary, Hellhammer, Bolt Thrower and Deicide, then pull up a chair, throw on your scrubs and watch the mortician as he begins to embalm these archaic tones. The place is here, the time is Nuclear Now!, and the Father, the Spirit and the Holy Ghost have each turned their backs on us long ago.

Sanguis Imperem takes the first half of the split, several of whom actually perform live with Nocturnal Blood, making this an even more natural collaboration. They open with a bizarre, brief ritual of fuzzed out clean guitars, background winds and noises titled "Festum Mortis", and then proceed into "Carrier of Plagues", a grinding blaster with basic, primal riffing and a nihilistic level of hostility reminiscent of the early English bands like Bolt Thrower, Benediction, Impaler and the like. "Tyrants of Iron" is more bombastic, with some steady, slogging rhythms over a march-like drum beat, as well as some snarls mixed into its growling. "Red is the Color of the Gods" is the best of the three, reminding me very much of something that might have appeared on War Master or Realm of Chaos, with a great build in momentum after a writhing, snakelike melody that offsets the pummeling chords.

I'm already loosely familiar with Nocturnal Ghoul, Spirit of Darkness and his Nocturnal Blood project, having some exposure to his previous EPs, Nocturnal Crucifxions (2009) and Invocation of Spirits (2010) which, while falling short of mind blowing, were successful stabs at a raunchy, ancient vortex of evil. The material here on the split is no different, and the guy knows how to win you over almost immediately with a creepy intro ("Chime the Bells of Doom") and an immediate lapse into death metal so dark it can NOT have been created in the surface world. At the very least, this was written in a deep, dank cellar somewhere, or some secret catacomb that runs below a sepulcher, where the willing are free to rob the dead from below. This shit is just disgusting sounding, and tracks like "Blasphemy Written in Fornication" and "Abnormalities Prevail" should solidify Nocturnal Blood's place among similar depravities like Funebrarum and newer acts like Cruciamentum, Vasaeleth and Innumerable Forms.

If I were forced to choose a side, well, I think I've made that already clear. Sanguis Imperem shows promise, and riff-wise the bands are close to the same level, but I did find myself losing a little interest in spots where the material felt too dry and had little cryptic octane dowsing it to compensate. Nocturnal Blood simply maintains that grim and horrific craft I have come to expect out of the better nostalgia-fueled death metal acts, and his side of the split is like having your rotten cake (Left Hand Path) and eating it too (Onward to Golgotha). I'm certainly no apostate towards the more modern, technical and experimental movements within the scene, but it's always refreshing to throw on some of this freshly festering, old school sound and realize that there are others out there who know just where it all came from, and where it is very often welcome to return.

Verdict: Win [7.25/10]

http://www.myspace.com/sanguisimperem
http://nocturnalblood.hellsheadbangers.com/

Nocturnal Blood - Invocation of Spirits EP (2010)

Nocturnal Blood is the product of a single man, known here as 'Nocturnal Ghoul, Spirit of Darkness', who also goes by Blasphemer in his thrash band Street Force or Blasphemer, Nuclearwhore of Black Blood in the now defunct black attack Nuclear Desecration. The Ghoul performs all the instruments on this recording, and it won't take long to figure out how it fits right in with the rest of Hell's Headbangers recent output, a hybrid of black and death metal which attempts, and to an extent, succeeds in sloshing a fresh bucket of goats blood across the face of tradition. This is meaty, violent, and simplistic aggression which lacks anything by way of ambition, or to the logical extent, any of the pretentious values that can accrue.

It's merely a series of raw and vile guitar rhythms, laced in huge, reverbrous atmosphere, that stretch above the pulverizing drum core and the on/off grunting and snarling of Ghoul's ill intentions. The rest is up to the listener, and this listener was at least satisfied for the 11 minute playtime. There are two original compositions, the "Invocation of Spirits" and "Blood Impurity", both with similar riffs that occasional lapse into a grim, old school death metal breakdown. Occasionally Ghoul will visit a third vocal, a kind of harsh, stuttering whisper which he uses in the bridge of the title track, but this about sums up the recording. The third track is a cover of Hellhammer's "Reaper", from the Triumph of Death demo, and it sounds even more oppressive and carnal than the Nocturnal Blood songs.

Nocturnal Ghoul is playing to that niche audience of old school, necrotic purists who prefer as little deviation from their source influences as possible, and if you count yourself among that elite legion, then the Invocation of Spirits EP (and previous Nocturnal Crucifixions EP) should provide you with enough fun to snatch the 7". It's nothing exemplary, but the man knows how to party like it's 1989 and all hell is breaking fucking loose, beginning at the local cemetery.

Verdict: Win [7/10]

http://nocturnalblood.archasmreleasing.com/