Artist: Nocturnal Keep
Title: From The Ruins of Dundrum Castle
Type: Album
Label: Digital / Fiadh Productions
It’s not that often when I am introduced to a side project of an artist before I have really explored their main entity to the level I want to, but timings are everything and this album from the same Belfast based mind as the atmospheric Dratna came to my world a week or so ago.
‘The Vile Denier’ has a soft introduction, keyboards, and a surge of black metal far more raw than what I know of Dratna. It is fierce, snarling stuff with vocals twisted in hate but then this beautiful guitar run rise from the anger and takes this razor edge sound deep into a a wordl that almost holds me with awe. The rhythm and the sense of story to the sound are huge. The histroy of Dundrum castle is rooted in the chaos of early 13th Century Ireland, ambition and violence and such movements of history. There is a asense of this in the clean vocals, the shifting rhythms and, yes, the hooks that the exemplary songwriting hides. A little hint of what I always think of as the Finnish approach to melody in black metal but rebuilt in a different way, one rooted to the world the title describes.
‘Bone Harvest’ dives a little darker, a straight stabbing riff and a gnawing vocals. The use of the deep choral backing sounds adds a pinch to dungeon synth to the mix but never fear, this is still full on and raw. Everything here is alike a descent; the vocals seem to want to drag you underground (or pull up your remains?), the guitar melodies and runs always descend.
‘Carrion Throne’ has a delicate little keyboard intor utterly pulled asunder by the tearing riff that swoops in. Dark and the effect like tearing talons at first it becomes an irresistable, pitch black ride with a simply brilliant breakdown midway that would have hair flying at a gig. Turbulent, wild and black; a sea of great crows wings beating wildly appear in my mind, dead flesh tearing…and then the stillness of the synth outro. Brilliant, frankly.
‘The Hallowed’ closes the album. An intro like a harbinger of doom, the ambush riff that shocks even though you know it is coming and a sound as grim as you please. Once more the superb vocals snarl and tear to perfection, an almost gothic touch to feel added by the backing vocals. Something in the way the lyrics are spat out brings to mind an insane, warning laden nursery rhyme, a village chant, a prophecy. It feels so linked to a place, somehow. The black shadow of the history a place has cast. With touches of heavy metal to the guitar too it is just fantastic.
I am so taken with this debut. Not only do you have hook laden yet raw black metal you have some superb guitar runs, truly evocative vocals and the songwriting with the sometimes eerie shifts and that vein of heavy metal here and there it is just a dark, nasty little delight.
Absolutely superb Irish black metal.
Gizmo
From the Ruins of Dundrum Castle | Nocturnal Keep | Dratna
From The Ruins of Dundrum Castle | Nocturnal Keep | Fiadh Productions
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