Nocturnal Bloodlust - Whiteout (Review)

Long-lived projects inevitably come a period when creative level stops at a certain point. Someone early, someone later, but it still happens. Recently, this fate befell the band Nocturnal Bloodlust.

My Rating: 70/100

Source: discogs.com

After 8 years of impeccable creativity, Nocturnal Bloodlust released a fairly simple single for this band, Life to Die. I don't want to say that this was bad. But from the world-class band after release ZeTeS (especially after track Malice Against), you expect, at least, a repetition of this ears's holiday.

Nevertheless, now we see their new work. Impression is somehow ambiguous. You can call it anything: blurry, uncertain, but not positive. As if they wanted to cram more show-off's instead of complexly forming an artistic task. Composer's work looks very weak. Instrumental parts are excellent, but overall structure all spoils. 2nd track is very similar to pop song, which was put on hardcore rhythm section, while diluting it with natural harmonics. Yes, they previously released similar songs (for example, TYRANT). But artistic tasks were formed more carefully. 4th track is generally some kind of nonsense. And only 3rd track gives what we listen to deathcore for - very honest lyrics and guitar riffs on a very low tuning. Earlier it was already released on the single, but now vocal and instrumental parts have been seriously reworked and this is a positive moment.

Now specifically about voice. Hiroyuki is such a great talent that this voice can not be spoiled. It fits well with both pop music and deathcore. Here it's expressed in a variety of vocal techniques. Actually, this is all that can be said, since it's not appropriate to discuss such a great talent.

Instrumental parts - everything is predictable here. This is an excellent performance and this is exactly what I expected from real professionals. Nevertheless, there are two disputable points. First is guitars. I expected more natural and pinch harmonics. They perfectly complement the constructions, characteristic for extreme music. Second is drums. Too sharp fills. As if they took pieces from different songs and put them into compositions. In the rest, we can say that instrumental parts are great.

What can you say at the end? It's difficult to make unambiguous conclusions when it comes to such wonderful musicians. Band has once again shown that it is not in vain called a world-class project. But now we hear not what we heard in the period from 2012 to 2016. Who knows, maybe it's for the better: change is a sign of development. But it would be desirable, that it really was development, instead of a quickie.