NACHTVORST — Stills (review)

NACHTVORST — Stills album cover Album · 2009 · Depressive Black Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
3.5/5 ·
Vehemency
From the outside, Nachtvorst first major release Stills didn’t trigger any big interest in me to check it out, but luckily I did because Stills offers some very solid black / doom metal that, for some unknown reason, has remained rather obscure since its release a few years back.

Maybe the obscurity has something to do with the fact that Stills isn’t totally for underground cults and neither for those with a mainstream taste. The album balances somewhere between, providing five generally long songs of gloomy melancholy that present a lot of interesting melodies throughout the 48 minutes. The album is produced rather professionally, and the massive sound is put to its best use on the short instrumental ”Murmurs” that is so damn sludgy and heavy that it’s surely to have an impact on any listener, almost at least.

Excluding that track, Nachtvorst focuses on more general mid-tempo wanderings that occasionally turn into faster black metal sections. Recurring melodies appear smoothly within tracks, never sounding annoyingly repetitive. Some breakdown moments of more calmful sounds are presented in the tracks too to make sure the album never sounds boring. During the doomiest moments, vocalist Erghal is very reminiscent of Astaroth from Raventale and very similar to Mikko Kotamaki (Swallow the Sun, Alghazanth) during the higher-pitched screams.

Nachtvorst’s debut offering took me by surprise: it’s not often you come across this grabbing and well performed black / doom metal fusion. Even if not doing anything outstandingly innovative here, Stills deserves more recognition and will get more plays at least in my player from now on.
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