Macabre Festival of Nosophutos

Tyrannic followed up their first demo with another about 18 months later, this time called Macabre Festival of Nosophutos. The sound quality shows an improvement over the self-titled release and the musicianship is a bit better too, although by and large the style shown here differs in that the 2 songs both aim towards the fast end of the spectrum, with more black/heavy playing than the tortuous black doom on the previous demo.

‘Dweller of the Ancient Void’ probably represents the choicer cut, settling into easy mid/fast pace with that sort of vibe that Darkthrone adopted after their classic trio of early albums, also splashing out with a messy guitar solo and some genuinely quite extreme moments. Using only 5 minutes, I can see how Tyrannic learned to structure a song more completely, as well as coordinate the instruments more effectively. ‘Nosophutos/Anhedonic Wilderness’ heads into doomier territories after initial mid-pace, revealing just how loud the cymbals are after the guitar turns to lower notes. The largely instrumental riffing in the middle of that song feels really quite tame when the rest of the release displays plenty of energy, while the closing guitar lead actually builds up some emotion in nostalgic fashion. That ending reminds me nicely of Katatonia’s first album.

This second demo thus aims for a bit less atmosphere than the first, but exposes the other side of Tyrannic’s sound, which would eventually merge more fully. Though some fun is to be had with Macabre Festival of Nosophutos, it’s not that surprising that these tracks were not used for the later full-lengths.