Tour de Garde, 2016
Genre: Black Metal
1. Midnight Ritual
2. Possessed by Burning Hatred
Nocturnal Chalice is a new one man project out of Scotland. Coming out on the ranks of Tour de Garde you can probably expect this to be some fairly raw Black Metal. This is only a two song cassette demo, the cover isn't pro-printed or anything, which gives the tape an even more old school feel to it. Almost like the band themselves went out and xeroxed copies for distribution. I love the aesthetic because it brings me back to the old days.
Nocturnal Chalice give us two songs rooted in the old way of doing things. Musically I really like what I'm hearing. It's raw and rough, but the riffs are really good and they rather old an ancient atmosphere of the early 90's Black Metal. Amidst the chilling riffs that are blasted over there's some really excellent riffs with great melodies and some that really hook the listener in. It's only two songs, but it generates an excellent atmosphere and I'd certainly like to hear more from this project.
Naturally, the major complaint with anything raw usually comes down to a production issue. In some cases the raw production works and it could work quite well for Nocturnal Chalice, the only gripe I really have is that he needs to get some control over his low end. There's too much of a "wooshing" sound in the mix and that mars the listening experience a little bit. If he sits down and cleans up these frequencies he might be onto something really great here!
In the end, I think Nocturnal Chalice are doing some pretty good things. Hopefully I'll be able to hear more from them soon and I'd be interested to see where the project goes from here, since its off to a fairly strong start.
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