Review: The Noctambulant “Advocatus Diaboli”

The Noctambulant “Advocatus Diaboli”
DGRecords

Florida as a state was always, especially in first half of 90’s and especially outside of the peninsula, connected with Death Metal by Metalheads. But it was never truth. I mean, there always were several bands playing other sub-genres of Metal over there.  Good example for that is THE NOCTAMBULANT.

This band is rather young one, created in 2013. But founders E. Helvete (Philip Newton – vocals, guitars) and D. Franseth (Darin Fitz – drums, vocals) aren’t any green horns and played earlier in several bands – at least if we’ll follow what’s written in bio. Also second guitarist John Hoarfrost who left the band in 2014 to come back this year has some experience. Ensemble has of course some releases (actually three EPs: ‘Dreams of Rotten Silence’, ‘The Fear Leader’ and ‘Hubris/Nemesis’), plated several gigs and so on.

And finally August 26^th, 2016 came out debut full-length of our American friends. It contains ten songs of Melodic, but also strongly connected with classic bands Black Metal. Well, when I’m talking about classic bands I mean these really classic ones. So all these ‘pure’ and ‘the only true’ fans for who Black Metal is only this Norwegian and very often primitively played one should stop to read this review for now! Rest can and even should stay.

As I said there’s quite huge element of melody here. But this melody is created only by guitars and, let’s say, is something what spice the music (the same like some technical tricks). Anyhow, mostly guys play just like it should be done – heavy, aggressive, in some way even brutal. That’s why even if this absolutely is Black Metal you can easily hear influences of other kinds of Metal on this album. OH… Riffs change of course quite often here. In drumming I can hear a little Punk Rock or at least Thrash Metal what I definitely like, by the way. Darin beats energetically, ballsy and variable. There’s maybe nothing super-complicated in that, but we have some changes of tempo, passages what make it interesting to listen to. Lars (Goerschafft) does good job on bass, I think. There’re only fragments when it’s very well hearable, anyway.

To sum up I have to tell you that this is another good band which I got know thanks to writing reviews. I can hear some things to improve in the future of course, but guys surely know about this. I’ll listen to THE NOCTAMBULANT sometimes. Well, solid band and album to cut long story short.