Ethereal Tomb

“Ethereal Tomb” was Nocturnus’ comeback album after they first split-up in the early 90s. By that time, the band had delivered some amazing futuristic technical death metal and I was naturally looking forward to a new album with great anticipation. However, I was let down somewhat. The music on “Ethereal Tomb” is considerably less technical overall than on previous releases and basically lacks fast parts completely. Also the arrangements are simpler than before. In other words, do not expect a continuation of “The Key” and “Thresholds”!

Unless you count the first demo, technicality (especially in the guitar department) was always a trademark of Nocturnus but here it feels like guitarists Mike and Sean are holding back. Only the opener “Orbital Decay” comes close to the old days of glory concerning the guitar work. It boasts the kind of melodic technical riffing and intense feel one would expect from Nocturnus and is consequently one of the best tracks on here. The simplicity of the drumming combined with the technicality of the guitars creates a nice contrast and leads me to describe “Orbital Decay” as a display of simplistic complexity. The rest of the album is far more straightforward and simple when it comes to the riffing. There’s still the occasional nod at technicality here and there on almost all the other tracks though, showing that the band can still come up with the goods if they feel like it. Also the solos, while competent, never reach the level of the old days. As I said, it feels like the guitarists are holding back. You know that these guys can do a lot more than what they do here.

The vocals are handled by bassist Emo Mowery and I don’t have much to complain about them. They are death metal growls and Mowery is the most brutal vocalist Nocturnus has ever had. Fortunately he doesn’t try to be the most brutal growler in the world and that wouldn’t have suited this album either. He does also use clean vocals on a couple of occasions as a spice.

The keyboards don’t play that big a role on this album when compared to the old stuff. Mostly Lou just plays carpets with a pretty warm keyboard sound, the cold and spacey sounding keyboards of e.g. “The Key” cannot be found here. Previously Lou managed to create some nice sci-fi atmospheres with the keyboards and he also played along with the guitar melodies at times, but on “Ethereal Tomb” he just sort of is there in the background and doesn’t do anything extraordinary.

“Edge of Darkness” is the simplest track on the album and it’s also a standout in a way. It would have been way too straightforward for the Nocturnus of old but it doesn’t sound out of place on this album. “Edge of Darkness” starts in a deceptively peaceful manner but soon it builds up into a very simple and heavy main riff (akin to “Ceremony of Opposites” era Samael perhaps), which isn’t bad at all and this track also features some nice clean guitars and spoken vocals. If one were to pick a single from this album, it would definitely be “Edge of Darkness”, since it’s a catchy slow track without any hard-to-get-into technical parts. Even though it’s a very un-Nocturnus like track I still like it. “The Killing” is another track that makes good use of simple heavy riffing and pounding drumming.

“Outland” is the worst track: it’s just an instrumental with a pretty simple and repetitive structure and I often end up skipping it altogether when giving this album a spin. One would think that with the proficiency of the musicians, they would’ve written something much more interesting, technical and varied than this in order to display their musical abilities. “Outland” has the feel of a filler to it, it sounds like a case of “we need one more track, so let’s record that instrumental we’ve been jamming on even if it isn’t anything special”. The instrumental “Nocturne in Bm” on the “Thresholds” album was a lot better.

The less technical and stripped-down musical approach of “Ethereal Tomb” leaves me with the feeling that something’s missing. I know what Nocturnus are capable of and they do not use their full potential here. However, while I do think that their previous releases are better, I still consider this album to be enjoyable overall. In the end I found only "Outland" to be really boring. I just feel that the band should have gone full throttle with the technicality aspect like they used to do before, I don’t understand why they held back on that.