March to Perdition

Like most things in life, music is forked with choices. You can either try to carve out your own piece from the stone of the innovators, or you can experiment and push boundaries trying your damnedest to innovate, hoping that it will stand out in some meaningful way. Nocturnes Mist are stone carvers, trying to crunch their own numbers into the extremely familiar formula of 2nd wave black metal. A hell of a lot of blasting, grim croaked frog vocals, those minor key Halloween-themed melodies. Like many albums of this ilk, the more you are an stupefyingly insatiable fan of the more melodic side of the 2nd wave, Immortal, Dissection, and Judas Iscariot, the more you will enjoy here.

The Australian band released 2 demos and an EP between 1999 and 2004. Their debut full-length came out in 2009, and if you’re like me, you haven’t heard any of these. This was recommended to me by a friend and after checking the band out on different sites, I decided what the hell, and picked this up. The band’s label, Seance Records, describes this release as: “The thunderous second album of eerie old school Black Metal savagery from Australia, ten chilling hymns of 90s styled symphonic Black Metal alchemy forged from shadow, fire and blood by one of Australia’s pioneering Black Metal bands.”

Opening track Pits of Inhumanity is a microcosm of the entire album. Blasting drums, guitars & bass oversaturated with distortion, and vocals that are surely croaking about something evil, not too distant yet not upfront in the mix. The track begins with a very “heard it before” chord progression, but climaxes early with what the band does very well - breakdowns. Tempos cut in half, chords become arpeggiated and the subtle use of synths get slightly darker and more prominent. The breakdown in Pits of Inhumanity is killer, but it’s very brief and goes unrepeated.

The album is diced with sections of songs that make their memorable statement, but are cut off before they can be fully developed. Rise From Ashes begins with a high-end tremolo melody; a motif that many of the songs are similarly based around. It’s followed by another chugging riff set to a stomping black metal march, and has what could be fleetingly called a “solo”, probably breaking a few whammy bars during the recording process. It is soon left to a very mid-paced boring riff that leaves wavering synth notes floating above the monochrome. All of this occurring with the same monochrome vocal styling from Balam. The album closes with a short goth-styled piano melody that would not seem out of place in the middle of a 2000s Cradle of Filth record. It just seems there to be there, not really adding much to the overall picture.

Other than an interesting chaotically dissonant section in The Alchemist, all the songs bleed into one another and are difficult to distinguish. The aforementioned tracks stick out the most for me, but the mood I get with this album is not so much a sense of depression, fear, or anger, but that of impatience. I’m waiting for something - anything to help this rise slightly above the grim sea, but it’s just not there. The band has energy, sure, but on this release they are following a very black and white style that has been done to death over the past two decades ago. When you have bands that up the extremity like Axis of Light, or that give a captivatingly haunting feeling like Cultes Des Ghouls, it’s hard to justify grabbing March To Perdition. It doesn’t have much in the way of atmosphere, melodic ideas that are familiar at best, and where the whole presentation lacks the passion that Nocturnes Mist has to compete with in the current black metal scene.