review by: Roberto Martinelli

Nokturne is the latest band in the exploding American black metal scene. There are enough US bands now that one can begin to talk about said band having an "American sound," which this group definitely has.

Nokturne reminds me of fellow American black metallers Summon on their Baptized by Fire album (reviewed in issue #3), but much tighter and with a "better" production. Indeed the sound on Embracer of Dark Ages is fuller and more hard hitting technically, but it isn't as cult as Summon's. However, the kind of riffs and drum work the two bands use is very similar, with Nokturne doing it faster.

The album starts off with its weakest song, "Exterminan," which experiments with a slow variation of the blast beat, but ending up sounding really much as I do when I sit down at my kit and try to figure out how the masters do it. It isn't til track four, "Nothing," with its ferocious speed and determination, that Embracer of Dark Ages starts to show some promise.

Pretty much throughout, Nokturne delivers the formula of anger and then more anger without adding too many more dimensions - a negative characteristic of much of the US scene's bands. The vocals are much in this way, and don't provide much more than a pissed off guy doing his black metal rasp.

There is a clean guitar interlude provided on track six, "The Hated." Although giving the listener a rest was a good idea by including this track, the material is so weak that a minute of dripping water would have had as much of the desired effect. The penultimate track sees inclusion of a Scandinavian-influenced black metal melody.

Nokturne are unquestionably doing their damnedest to be as ferocious and brutal as they possibly can. In a sense, they have recorded a bestial album, but at the same time Embracer of Dark Ages lacks impact. This is probably due to the band's placing their resources into being as hard and fast as possible, without effectively exploring the atmospheric and ethereal side that made albums that are as blisteringly monstrous as Embracer of Dark Ages (like Immortal's Pure Holocaust or Keep of Kalessin's Through Times of War), but also had much more to offer.