NOCTURNAL FEAR

You can’t get much more metal than this. The spirit of Venom, Bathory, Sodom, Possessed, Kreator, and many more have been ingested by the band many times over to create this, the bastard child of that malicious marriage. In opener ‘Murder For Hire’, the riffs are furious, the lead work is ravaging, the drums are machine-like, every grim line is delivered with the same rabid intensity, and the complex song structure and time signature and feel changes is nothing less than formidable. The title track maintains that level of sheer ferocity, as does ‘I am War’, opening with Bishop’s admiration of the amoral ‘Alien’, a cold, calculating beast with one sole purpose: destruction. By now, if you haven’t got what Nocturnal Fear is about, then you may as well go home. At almost eight minutes long, the complex structure of ‘I am War’ further demonstrates what this band is capable of in terms of dynamics, shifting seamlessly through wave after wave of rising ferocity. Of note is ‘World War 3’, a track that stands out not just for its use of keyboards, but for its solid riffs, its bed-of-nails drum work, and the warped lead work from about the three-minute mark that sits across two contrasting grooves. And so it is for the rest of the album, which is what lets it down. The performances are consistent, the riffs are ravaging, and the attitude is vicious, but between the songs, there’s little variation. The majority of the songs are very long and, with as much crammed into each song as is possible, they sometimes make more for an endurance test. The album does little to challenge any boundaries, it simply doesn’t want to. Like the aforementioned ‘Alien’, it knows what it wants and is remorseless, unremitting, and unyielding in its fortification of everything that is Metal-with-a-capital-M-and-a-multitude-of-devil-horns. ‘Excessive Cruelty’ is the stuff that is made not by metal fans, but by metal devotees. One look over the track titles says everything you need to know about this album. Nocturnal Fear is fighting for what metal means to metal fans, without even the vaguest shadow of compromise.

LABEL:

FORMAT:

Moribund Records

Album

EXCESSIVE CRUELTY

Review by Jason Guest

RUNNING TIME:

48:00

RELEASE DATE:

30th August 2011

TRACK LISTING

1) Murder for Hire
2) Excessive Cruelty
3) I am War
4) Absolute Annihilation
5) Rolling Thunder
6) World War 3
7) Intro - Invade to Conquer Part 1
8) Frozen in Stone
9) Human Shield

COUNTRY OF ORIGIN:

USA

"The spirit of Venom, Bathory, Sodom, Possessed, Kreator, and many more have been ingested by the band many times over to create this, the bastard child of that malicious marriage."