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LORD BELIAL ‘Nocturnal Beast’ Regain Records (2005)
It is the second time during this week that I find myself pleasantly surprised by a band's work, and this time the credit goes to the Swedish Black Metal outfit Lord Belial, and their sixth studio release "Nocturnal Beast". Now, people who have never before listened to any of the band's previous releases, or whose last point of contact with Lord Belial was the album "Angel Grinder", would be really shocked by the changes that the band has implemented both in terms of sound and musical direction - still, the overall result is quite impressive.
What I found very interesting about "Nocturnal Beast", is that it is one of the few modern Black Metal albums, which is very much focused on promoting it's melodic side, without loosing too much of it's heavy character. The only problem that this album has, and it is very strange, since Andy LaRocque was mainly involved with it, is the production! Whereas the melodic guitar parts, which are plentiful on this album, are brilliantly handled, the main guitar riffs are very weak and most of the times buried underneath a pile of bass tunes and double-bass, steady rhythmical drumming.
Influenced by the likes of epic Bathory and late Immortal, Lord Belial have prepared nine good quality compositions which will easily attract the attention of fans from many different sub genres of extreme metal music. The Epic rhythms of "Desolate Passage", with it's flamboyant guitars, the introvert tunes of "Nocturnal", and the not so typical melodies which were used in "Insufferable Rituals" should raise quite a few eyebrows, and so should Hjalmar Nielsen's virtuoso guitar work in "Introduction of Human Sorrow".
I am really gutted not to be able to give this album a higher ranking, especially since I had a really good time listening to it, but I strongly believe that these nine compositions would have sounded far better with a different production. Lord Belial are a Black Metal band, and one of the most important aspects in the sound of any such outfit is power and edge. If these elements are more audible in their future releases, well, then we will definitely be talking about one of the best Black Metal bands around!
***½
Review by John Stefanis
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