Children of the Night

Split releases are always a bit tricky. You need to find two or more outfits whose musical output nicely fits together, but whose style is distinguishable enough. Otherwise a listener might end up thinking “I would have preferred this to be a full length by artist A” or feeling that there is no real connection between the bands and the release has been done in such a way just to maybe save a few bucks in the production. By bundling together Georgia based Psychonaut 4 and French atmospheric/depressive black metal maestros Nocturnal Depression Austrian label Talheim Records once again proved that they have a great feeling for what their customers want by putting out “Children of the Night”.

It is hard to tell who makes the bigger impression. Thankfully this decision is not one that has to be made, as I really enjoyed all the songs here. Maybe Psychonaut 4 come across a tad more fragile and even more emotional, with Nocturnal Depression being slightly more direct in their approach. However, both bands absolutely put the emotions and the atmosphere front and center, presenting music that is sad and beautiful at the very same time.

All songs fade away and then begin to come to life again, mounting toward a plateau of ominous and magisterial sound and then flying higher, filling the senses to the brim in a cyclonic storm of pummeling drums, raking riffs, and madly flickering leads, as both vocalists lift their painful voices into inflamed yet gritty chants. Often the tracks fall into an abyss of swirling ebon dissonance, using flourishes of despondent psychedelia and unrelenting brutality to accent a menacing black metal core. A lot of acoustic sections connect the more aggressive parts, giving the whole split a very moody feeling.

Beside two own songs each band also presents one cover of the other one. Not being familiar with the original versions I cannot judge how far off the interpretations might be, but what I can say is that those tracks are perfectly embedded within the whole package.

The sound is nuanced and clear, without sounding too synthetic. Coming as a noble digipak special edition and clocking in just under 50 minutes “Children of the Night” should be a great addition for collectors of emotional depressive black metal, presenting two great bands of the genre at the top of their game.