Noctis Imperium – Nihil (2010)

Out of the hundreds of bands we receive every month, we have three main categories for them: great, terrible, and average. Noctis Imperium is one of those that fit exactly in the average category, there is nothing really wrong with it, but there is also nothing impressive to this band. The songs are catchy and brutal, but asides from this you can fast forward in between songs and everything will sound the same.

Hailing from Venezuela, the band does a solid job in creating energetic Death/Black Metal songs. The band’s guitar work is pretty solid and catchy, and the solos are very well placed in the songs, we venture to say that the guitars and drumming (courtesy of Nicholas Barker) are probably the strongest elements of this band, since the rest falls on the ‘nothing out of the ordinary’ category.

Through the album, there are very good melodic sections like at the end of “Descensus ad Inferos” where we get a great riff, paired with tight drumming, and a catchy bass line. But then the band kind of kills the flow with the Marduk-like blast beats at the beginning of the next song “Bring me Sacrifice”, we don’t see the point in being that brutal that fast right after a very nice melodic ending to the previous song. In this song, the “Bring me Sacrifice” verse sound very badly mixed and kind of ruins the atmosphere of the song as well.

Another issue we have with “Nihil” is that some of the songs are very short and usually anti-climatic, since we have pretty decent build-up but the band comes up short. The band’s approach to songwriting is a bit naïve and needs more work, they are not that bad, but they need to work on structuring their songs better. The band has the chops to make good songs like “Maze of Torment”, but usually falls short.

In general, “Nihil” is an OK release, but there is nothing exemplary or out of the ordinary about this band. The quality is somewhat there and hopefully in a few years they are making more mature and better prepared records, or keep hiring famous musicians to play all the other instruments besides the drums.

Release: August 17th, 2010

Country: Venezuela