LECHEROUS NOCTURNE - Occultaclysmic
May 5, 2018, 5 years ago
(Willowtip)
This is the first album since 2013's Behold Almighty Doctrine for South Carolina's Lecherous Nocturne, Occultaclysmic (hate typing it, but love looking at it) also being their first for Willowtip Records, a label that the discerning longhair can definitely trust. Before this album (their fourth), the band was with Unique Leader, and they definitely have that sound: modern American tech-death, with an obsessive focus on inhuman playing. But here, songs like the excellent title track sound more like chaotic tech-death of the classic-era Relapse vintage, the band just positively raging (seriously, listen to this song, now), and in the process wiping away any of your preconceptions about what American tech-death might sound like.
Refreshingly, here the production isn't wildly over-processed (it's actually pretty spot-on), and the songs aren't played with an emotional distance (the vocals are delivered as if the lyrics are genuinely about something), so there's all the bad tech-death stuff pushed aside, Lecherous Nocturne not stopping there but gnashing, shredding, tearing all that stuff to pieces, then stopping in for a couple attention-grabbers mid-album with “Tower Of Silence”'s weirdo guitar part and instrumental “Remembrance”'s mighty, epic pull, the band showing more songwriting smarts on this one song than in most US tech-death bands' entire discography. A cool album that just keeps getting cooler as it goes on; death metal fans will want to check this one out.