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NOCTURNUS AD
Paradox

Profound Lore (2019)
Rating: 10/10

Nope, it’s not an eagerly awaited reunion but very much a progression and lift off from Nocturnus’ debut offering The Key way back in 1990; a time when people were laughing about the inclusion of keyboards on a death metal record.

Although consisting of three original Nocturnus members in Mike Browning (vocals and drums), Gino Marino (guitar) and Richard Bateman (bass), alongside Mike Walkowski (guitar), the 1999 incarnation of the legendary Floridian act under the moniker of Nocturnus AD would soon change again to become what it is today. Still featuring Browning at the helm, the current line-up is completed by guitarist Demian Heftel and Belial Koblak, bassist Daniel Tucker (ex-Obituary), and keyboard player Josh Holdren.

In my dreams I prayed that this album would once again bamboozle us with quizzical cosmic tomfoolery, complex threads of brain-melting chuggery and technical jolts of keyboard-laced aggression… and damn I am not disappointed!

Nocturnus AD’s debut full-length opus is a death metal lesson of strategic complexity boasting the sort of time changes, chord progressions and dazzling keyboard menace that I’d missed so much. Sure, we’ve seen and heard so many complex tech-death bands come and go since Nocturnus first arrived on the scene, and maybe I’m just drenched in nostalgia, but although this album is very much a progression from 1990 it’s still a throwback to a magical time when the Floridian scene was starting to take over the world and bands were branching out onto new horizons and shocking us with stunning displays of extra-terrestrial instrumentation.

Paradox displays all those qualities and more while remaining heavy, sinister and very much death metal as slower passages are infected by wondrous solo strands and Browning’s vocals sneer over a cascading waterfall of enigmatic, majestic waves of lush experimentation.

A fetid chug writhes like some water-soaked beast out of the cosmic abyss as flecks of melancholy flirt with fizzing Martian landscapes, and I’m there, caught up in this complex web of banter as ‘Seizing The Throne’ heaves its weighty yet youthful mass from some cold crater; bewildering solos coat the face like clammy cobwebs cast out from some alien parasite as we’re thrown into this vast labyrinth of extremity.

‘The Bandar Sign’ sees the ghost of Tom G. Warrior resurrected vocally as another sinister network of chugs develops and those glittering keys float like some aimless phantom draped in white. I’m already bruised and battered by this barrage of over the top meandering; Nocturnus AD going above and beyond its previous pods of cosmic reckoning to create a myriad of wailing wells that bubble and splutter to enormous avant-garde proportions. All we need is a John Zorn saxophone to befuddle us more as Browning continues his derisive smirks and stately commands behind that wall of stabbing percussion as another mesmerising passage comes to fruition.

And yet Paradox, for all of its construction and perplexing mystery, somehow remains so engulfing and almost accessible rather than migraine-inducing as some tech-death bands may be accused of. Instead, we get the torrid barrage of ‘Paleolithic’; an esoteric grinding masterpiece whereby its astral birth eloquently conceives dark, murky waterfalls of ascending then descending chords before grating bursts of blackened speed are infiltrated by stabbing jabs of soloing.

Sure, I’m waffling in my over-excited passion for what is essentially the best death metal album I’ve feasted upon for a while, even though I listed so feverishly after Monstrosity’s last offering (2018’s The Passage Of Existence), but with Paradox, Nocturnus AD takes on new levels, lifting us to greater plateaus of science whereby spiralling axe work and conflicting keys wrestle with tumbling bass lines and monolithic beats straight out of the asylum.

‘Precession Of The Equinoxes’ just wants to bamboozle. Its title alone just mocks the layman whose brain capacity just can’t cope with the cranium-busting axe work and pulsating rhythms which cavort and clatter. And yet within such a framework of such conflicting manifestations is that sheer wondrous element of beauty which only a band of this ilk can conjure.

Once again I need to mention the comfort in such a pain-stakingly put together maze of torment, as Browning and company effortlessly hit us with the vicious speed of ‘The Antechamber’; a cold void I can only begin to try to imagine as the mesh of instrumentation toys with Browning’s snarling vocal outbursts. The entanglement of all that is present just rolls through the mind and the ears as each sentence that rolls off Browning’s tongue plays like some ancient yet potentially alien tapestry of mind-boggling information.

The epic ‘The Return Of The Lost Key’ is brimming with confidence and metaphysical quality as Browning barks of “transcendental consciousness” and the “guardians of the hidden gate”; a storyteller second to none backed by that majestic orchestra of mayhem and grandeur as the pace shifts from interstellar speed to slower, spiralling strands of chaos.

‘Apotheosis’ and ‘Aeon Of The Ancient Ones’ follow suit, their trajectories as obviously esoteric and bewildering as what has already passed; each instrument zapping the listener via a frazzled circuit board attached to some behemoth of a spaceship that has just heaved itself out of some secret desert chamber.

It is truly staggering heavy metal as celestial as it is Gothic; Nocturnus AD thrashing with hyper blast beats before shifting through the galaxy with all manner of unworldly delights. ‘Apotheosis’ is one of the album’s speedier expressions, while the equally maniacal and phantasmal ‘Aeon…’ comes whizzing in like some out of control mothership about to implode and cascade its extra-terrestrial ash over an unsuspecting nation.

As ‘Number 9’ closes proceedings as an instrumental of the highest palatial order, I’m finding myself kneeling at the altar of such a force; overjoyed at its return, but also the distance it has travelled. And maybe, just maybe, the romance of it all would be fulfilled if Paradox was the only release of this band, almost acting like some shooting and fading star, because I’m gonna need a few years yet to fully appreciate and unravel this masterpiece of sound.

When Stevie Wonder wrote of songs in the key of life I think he was speaking of Nocturnus AD! The key has been found… now let this album change your life.

Neil Arnold

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