Over the course of three brutal albums, Noctem have certainly built an impressive name for themselves, touring with the likes of Marduk, Gorgoroth, Napalm Death and taking their dizzying take on death metal all around Europe. For various reasons we missed out on their last effort, 2014’s ‘Exilium’, but 2011’s ‘Oblivion’ was a masterstroke which made our albums of the year list as we noted “not just a great black/death metal album but a great metal album period – ‘oblivion’ is Noctem’s highest point to date.” Once again beautifully packaged (which is no surprise from a band who pay such careful attention to detail), ‘Haeresis’ is the band’s fourth full-length effort. Released through Art Gates Records, it packs ten tracks into forty-five minutes, and such is the potency of the music that you will feel every single one of those minutes as the band plunge you headlong into a blackened abyss.
The album opens, not with a quiet instrumental, but with a furious explosion of percussion and scorched earth guitars. An immediate rush of Adrenalin, ‘Through the black temples of disaster’ delves back to ‘Midian’-era Cradle of Filth with its ferocious, blackened assault and deft melodic flourishes. Beleth’s vocals, ripped from the very womb of hell, are scarred directly across the surface of the track, but its Voor’s devastating blast beats that shake the foundations of the building and, right form the off, it’s obvious that Noctem have opted to make this latest effort bigger and bolder than that which has gone before whilst still maintaining the extremity for which they’re known. ‘Auto-da-fe’ plunges the listener into a darker, dirtier world that adds a touch of grind to the mix. Make no mistake, this is brutal and yet a haunting mid-section with acoustic guitars and atmospheric elements show that Noctem have lost none of their feel for dynamic shifts that neatly emphasize the heavier elements of the music. Faster, harder and heavier, ‘the submission discipline’ is a dizzying succession of blackened riffs and toxic vocals delivered with a demonic panache that sees the speakers practically smoke as the music emerges. In contrast, ‘Blind devotion’ adopts a doom-laden tempo at the outset that gives both weight and a sense of grandeur to the track. A schizophrenic piece of music, the band incorporate icy blackened riffs into latter portions of the song and the result is a darkly majestic track that underscores the power and depth of Noctem’s song-writing. The first half of the album concludes with ‘the dark one’, a harrowing track that opens to the sound of the damned burning in a fiery pit for all eternity. Their screams are soon muted by a hellish barrage of riffs from Exo and Ethell, but it is Beleth’s vocal performance that commands the attention here, as he savages his throat with the manic glee of the demonically possessed.
The second half of the album opens to the icy riffing of the title track which slyly incorporates melody into the grinding riffs even as Beleth continues to exhort the denizens of hell to an uprising, his authoritative vocals delivered as if to the massed ranks of the inferno itself. The arcing guitars of ‘Whispers of the ancient gods’ emerge in a blackened whirl as Voor lays down a thunderous backdrop. A ferocious and exquisite blast of heretical metal, ‘Whispers…’ captures Noctem at their best, juxtaposing relentless savagery with a sense of the epic that is impossible to ignore. That sense of the epic and the extreme continues on the searing ‘conjuring degradation and morbidity’ which packs in a number of short, yet stately solos amidst the bludgeoning riffs and hell-spawned vocals. The short, salacious brilliance of ‘the paths of the lustful abandon’ sees the album nearing the brutal conclusion of ‘pactum with the indomitable darkness’, a subtle, creeping piece of music that takes its time to emerge as one final moment of blistering brilliance, the band deftly shifting between crushing might and melodic shifts in order to produce a suitably memorable closing piece of music that is cinematic in scope.
Once again Noctem have laid down a stern challenge to their peers. Rooted in extremity, the music is satisfyingly vicious but, as we found with ‘Oblivion’, there are myriad flourishes which mark Noctem out as superlative musicians. It is the subtle flourishes that increasingly emerge with repeated listens and whilst you may initially note the bristling rage and cold misanthropy, as you listen more, so the dark majesty of the music emerges. Tempos shift, solos emerge from the darkness and, at the heart of this dark communion is Beleth, coordinating the assault, his voice one moment a sibilant hiss, the next a guttural roar that rumbles from the speakers. Noctem are a band truly dedicated to their art and ‘Haeresis’ is a bruising confirmation of their strengths that only grows over time. 8
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