Ethereal Tomb

Nocturnus, where to began? This is the first album I've ever listened by them so obviously I cannot compare their sound on this album to the sounds on their other albums. Now the album Ethereal Tomb is a strange, sickening, if not excellent concoction. The band is classified as a technical atmospheric death metal band, and for this album that holds correct. Of course Nocturnus could never beat Tiamat when it comes to atmospheric metal, but this could be because Ethereal Tomb's atmosphere gives slight allusions to being in outerspace.

"Outerspace? Death metal? PGK are you on crack?" is most likely what very few of you will say.

I say the above because while Tiamat's "Wildhoney" atmosphere was brought by acoustic guitars, sounds of nature, and keyboards. Nocturnus over here bring about sounds of industrialism, machines, and the complete opposite of nature.

If this album had a birage of electronic riffs in it then I would be hard pressed not to call it industrial death metal. Thankfully this band doesn't really too heavily on sound effects, but instead focus on alot of technical death metal sounds.

It's not to say that this album isn't without it's flaws, because holy shit does this album have flaws. The album starts off decent with "Orbital Decay". The song has quite a few thrash and death metal riffs that are very catchy, but are nothing to complicated or very fancy. The chorus is catchy if not a bit stupid. Sing it with me! "Orbital decay! Orbital decay!"

The best intro on this album goes to the song "Apostle of Evil" in fact I dare say that this is the best song on the entire album. The guitar riffs are the most complicated on the entire album. The guitarist managed to take certain scales and use them to their own benefit. The drumming is excellent and is not brought to foward in this song, which is good. Fans of my reviews (what is it 2? Just kidding.) well understand full well what I'm talking about.

From there the album slowly declines in musical value. I'm not saying that the rest of the songs are crap because that is far from the truth. I'm just saying that the band started getting a bit lazy in their song writing. Soon the songs start sounding the same. Same basic guitar sounds played with the same zeal. same damn drum rthyms, and the same basic atmospheric of being in outerspace.

Unfortunately by the time Sciene of Horror comes on I feel that the album has gone on long enough. Think about being at movie or play where you were certain that one part was the ending, but it dragged on for another 30 minutes to an hour. This is the way I feel when the song Science of Horror comes on. I just want the damn album to be over with, and it doesn't help that the song has the same structure as the other songs. Thankfully the instrumental song "Outland" comes on which is the second best song of the album, if only for the fact that for 4:17 the band changes their tone and goes a bit slower and more melodic. The piano sounds are also a welcome touch.

For those of you curious about this album I would suggest buying it in Season of Mist's 'Metal Pack" which includes Nocturnus "Ethereal Tombs", Darkside "Cognitive Dissonance" and Anata "The Infernal Depths of Hatred" for only $15.