Nocturnal Hollow “Deathless and Fleshless”
Undeground Movement
Finally something from South America!!! To boot this band comes from not so “clichéd” country as Brazil or Colombia. Contrary to scenes of these countries Venezuelan one is unknown to average Metalhead. Capitol of Venezuela is Caracas, but NOCTURNAL HOLLOW comes from other city, the same one as the most known Venezuelan band (what doesn’t mean that it’s well-known, unfortunately) – SERPENT CHRIST. This city is Punto Fijo. Its history isn’t long (to be honest is very short – city was create in 1940’s) and closely connected with refinery industry. Anyway, place of origin isn’t the only common thing for both bands.
The other and more important connection between NOCTURNAL HOLLOW and SERPENT CHRIST is person of guitarist and vocalist – Jose Rafael Escalante. Well, in S.C. he only plays guitar… However, other members of N. H. are: Leo Rios (bass) and George Knive (dr). These three guys in 2010 decided to create a band. What can be interesting it seems that since 2015 on gigs they run on two basses – second one plays Rodolfo Garcia whose home band is EPITAFIO.
“Deathless and Fleshless” is third full-length (which contains all songs from EP “Fleshless and Deathless” released last year) of our Venezuelan friends. They call music they create just Death Metal. And indeed it is Death Metal, as well old school one or even very old school… ehehehehehehe… Roots of this music are in 90’s n Netherland. So I’m sure that the most of you exactly know what to except after this album. We have short, rather broken riffs here. Sometimes J. R. serves us a little twisted ones – just like Gods of Enschede did it on “Malleus Maleficarum”, “Consuming Instinct” and first of all “Testimony of the Ancients”. But it’s not so easy. I can hear here also or first of all, strong influences of old Swedish Gods of Death Metal – mostly band which recorded for example “Like an Everflowing Stream”. There’re also some things which I can connote with American way of playing this kind of music. But these European ones dominate here. Solos and other very well hearable technical display are something what you shouldn’t expect here. There’s of course a lot of technic here (of both guitar, bass and drums) , but this is “visible” only for people who listen carefully music.
Anyway, Jose Rafael’s vocal is more in Swedish convention. It’s not similar to Martin van Drunen or Patrick Maneli’s one too much, I guess. More similarities I can find with Matti Kärki. So we have here old school growling: brutal, aggressive, oozing evil and in the same time very well understandable. George plays in very varying way. Seemingly in some songs it’s monotonous, but if we’ll listen more carefully…
Tempos are sometimes fast. We have here some low ones, too. Well, to be honest these lower ones dominate. The best example for that is “The Blackest Sorrow”. Of course also here we have some speed ups, but in general guys stand up more on heavy than speed in their music.
I could write more and more, but… It’ll be much better if you’ll listen to it by yourselves!
(c) Bart Tomaszewski (SEPULCROS PROD)
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