Twilightfall

When I first got into Nokturnal Mortum, I was a big fan of albums like Lunar Poetry and Goat Horns. While I was looking through their discography, I noticed they had another demo released around the same time as Lunar Poetry, called Twilightfall. Thinking it was going to be similar to Goat Horns and Lunar Poetry, I decided to check it out; after all, the cover art was similar. I think the only song I heard was "Dark Flower of Temptation" and not even more than a minute into it, I stopped listening and dismissed the entire album as crappy and boring thrash metal. I sure was an idiot, though, because a few years later I came across different songs and found that this was some pretty awesome metal I missed out on! Now for the past couple of years, Twilightfall has been one of my usual listens because it really is an exceptional piece of work.

So what does Twilightfall actually sound like? For starters, everything here sounds nothing like the rest of Nokturnal Mortum's discography. If I had to point out a genre, I'd fail miserably because there seems to be a big blend of heavy metal, black metal, thrash metal, and folk metal. "Melodic" metal could describe the music here, but that's still being too vague. Keyboards are still used, but there's a much bigger emphasis on the riffs. There are a ton of guitar solos scattered throughout each song and they never get old. Wotherax does an awesome job at leads and it's too bad he has only appeared on a few more releases. Production is solid, but incredibly light. You can hear all the instruments well - the bass is very audible on "Glass Coffin." What I mean by light is that you could blast this music into your ears, but somehow the band picked the right frequencies so the music is never headache inducing or too much in your face.

The vocals are interesting. Varggoth is known for sounding silly sometimes, but here he's incredibly consistent. Most of his vocals are growls not deep enough to be considered death metal vocals, but still quite low. On songs like "Autumn Opposition" you can hear him do kind of a singing growl. I haven't really heard this effect anywhere else, so I thought it was pretty cool that it happened on Twilightfall. I don't recall any shrieks like that on the NeChrist album. There are some female vocals scattered around, but they are supplements to the whole song. They're well placed and I can't complain.

Twilightfall may not have that atmosphere found in Goat Horns or Lunar Poetry - in fact, despite recognizing a Ukrainian band when hear one, I probably would have had trouble doing so with this demo if I didn't know it came from Nokturnal Mortum. Fortunately, the songwriting and musicianship makes all of that a non-issue. These five metal tracks are rich, sporadic, catchy and versatile. Play ten seconds of some track and I'll be able to tell which song it is almost immediately. I cannot say the same about most Nokturnal Mortum albums. As I said earlier, the guitarwork is amazing and the riffs are the main driving force between these tracks. Wotherax's shredding really steals the show, especially on tracks like "On the Wings of Scarlet Sunset." There are even interlude tracks that serve as nice breaks between the metal. These tracks are by no means exceptional, but they do give the album a lot more structure and consistency. Much of the atmosphere in the album comes from these short tracks too.

My only complaint is that the lyrics aren't available. Apparently the band wasn't confident enough with their English, er, Engrish, to release them to the public. It's a bit of a shame because I would have been curious. As it appears that nearly all these tracks are in English, I was indeed able to pick out a few verses from songs like Glass Coffin and Crying of Ukraine. It would have been nice to fill in the gaps, as this is a rare form of Nokturnal Mortum where they stray from political and religious ideologies and warfare.

Twighlightfall is an album that should not be overlooked by anyone who appreciates some good metal even if it's not completely clear exactly what genre Twilightfall falls into. Nokturnal Mortum will probably never make an album like this again, so it's a classic in its own right. There's enough here to last for many listens and more. Even better, the demo was re-released in a full length album several years ago so you should be able to find it pretty easily in the market. It's pretty rare when a popular band's demo beats some of their well known full lengths, but this is definitely one of those cases.