Nocturnus A.D. "Unicursal" Review (I THINK THE CONCEPT MIGHT HAVE OVERTAKEN THE MUSIC HERE...)
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- Опубликовано: 10 сен 2024
- #thrallsofmetal #review #reaction #newalbum #newmetal #newmusic #nocturnusAD #profoundlorerecords #deathmetal #progressivemetal #techdeath #anticipatedreleases
Necrotic Nick and Shredlord go over the latest offering from Tampa progressive death metal underdogs Nocturnus A.D. with their new album "Unicursal" out now!
thrallsofmetal...
As a bona-fide Prog-Head since the 80's, fallen in love with all things 'Death Metal', particularly the difficult, technical stylings. This Unicursal record has blown me away ! Hats off to Mike. I prefer 'gutturals' though to drum and sing, is no easy feat {Phil Collins, you're gold, yes, I love 70's Genesis). And Mike was always a ray of sunshine whenever he appeared as a cameo in vintage footage (Morbid Angel, Death etc.)
All I can say is this 2LP is superb ! Mike, you've excelled yourself here !
First album review with SHred in 2024! Lets go!
Necrotic Nick- He's gonna be back more often in the future.
Shred and Rin on the same week? Feels like the good old days again.
Necrotic Nick- We'll eventually have Miller back in June too.
Jovial Joseph has made a comeback.
Necrotic Nick- Just as jovial and hilarious as I remembered him too lol
I love Brownings vocals on Abominations and The Key, and the vocals were pretty good on Paradox. But this album got away from the death metal sound too much and just turned into a spooky themed audiobook.
Glad to see Shred back! Looking forward to this review 🤘🏻🤘🏻
Necrotic Nick- It's great having him back as well. I think we'll be seeing more of him in the future as well.
Shredlord is the goat and this album is goated 🐐
Necrotic Nick- Glad to have him back.
Only two stars!? I personally love this album, despite the weak vocals at points.
I enjoyed the album. Im a nerd for sci-fi themed metal. They will never top The Key but i think this a rad album. I loved the keyboard flourishes and actually enjoyed the repetitive nature of the vocal patterns. If i had to give a negative i would say it would be a stronger album if it was about 15 minutes shorter.
I fuckin love it. NOCTURNUS AD!!!
The Key is still my favorite. The fact that this is part 3 of the story brings me joy.
Necrotic Nick- The Key is still my favorite thing from them without a doubt... if we're counting both Nocturnus and Nocturnus A.D..
Shred lives??!! Long live the shred
Necrotic Nick- It was great having him back.
Loved Nocturnus since 1992. The vocals on this album are bad. Mike Browning is doing his bandmates a great disservice with the spoken word vocals. Its lazy. This might have been better suited being the After Death side project they used to be. I love this band too, i just don't think the vocals do the Nocturnus brand name any favors.
Necrotic Nick- Yeah, as much as I love The Key and this band's unique approach I really can't get into this one and one of the big factors are the vocals. Compared to the music it feels so low effort like he'd rather just do an audio book but they made him at least speak gruffly. I was pretty disappointed by this one as I think Paradox just worked a lot better.
Vocals have never been this band’s strong suit. Nocturnus were always about guitars. To me anyway. Mike Davis specifically. And he hasn’t been involved in the AD side. And whilst Browning brings a strong concept to the table he doesn’t have the chops or vocal talents to properly realise this vision.
Great to see the lord of the shred back again. Great review as always boys.
Necrotic Nick- Thanks, man! It's great having him back honestly.
@@thrallsofmetal Yeah that is great that he’s back :).
I like all the weird interlude stuff. I just think they have too many songs on it. It's a cool sound, but I'm kind of wore out on it after about 30 minutes (thus appreciating the interlude breaks).
Necrotic Nick- I can see that. For me, the intros/ interludes hurt the flow of the album a lot. It was like watching a movie with a lot of needless exposition in those spots.
I get classic morbid angel vibes in the track cephalopod.This is definitely chutulu mythos and necronomicon lore.Which mike browning has been writing about since their inception.So the fact you guys are so lost with the concept ,Show the pedestrian vibe you went going into this.While the vocals are nothing to write home about.The way you destroy them was kind of spiteful.Maybe take the time to absorb each song ,not in one setting.Or check out the video for hod the stellar light.I will be enjoying this one.reguardless🤘😂
Necrotic Nick- I definitely get some Abominations of Desolation vibes on here and we're aware that the Lovecraftian themes were a big thing even while he was in Morbid Angel but it's the delivery. I love Lovecraftian horror and sci-fi but the monotonous vocals killed the immersive factor on here. I give Mike all the praise in the world as a musician but vocally he's never been that strong. The Key is probably his best vocal performance and it's been diminishing returns since in my opinion. There's no spite here as that would imply some sort of malice towards the band which there is none. I think you're being a bit too sensitive. If you love this then that's awesome but I'm not a fan of this one.
@@thrallsofmetal I agree with ya bro .Well said.I think matt brownings vocals were lower in the mix even on a classic like the key.So not as noticable .Maybe hiring a vocalist so that matt browning can concentrate on drums ,not such a bad idea in a tentative new release 🤘
Necrotic Nick- They did seem a bit lower but at the same time he was doing more in the way of vocal dynamics on The Key. It think he sounded good on that one. I wouldn't be apposed to them bringing in a vocalist to really give the lyrics some more life though. They tried on Thresholds but that one kinda missed the mark in my opinion. If they do try a different vocalist I'd be down to check that one.
He approached the vocals as narrator then ah vocalist which is the problem
Necrotic Nick- Yeah, that aspect really took me out of this listen sadly.
I dug the previous album which got mixed reviews
Necrotic Nick- I thought the last one was pretty decent but this band really hasn't matched The Key regardless of whether there's an "A.D." or not.
Man I totally forgot this album was coming out. Mike Davis WHERE ARE YOU?!?
Necrotic Nick- I almost forgot about this one as well honestly.
@@thrallsofmetal I dig the last Nocturnus A.D. album Paradox. I haven't heard a note of music from the new album. As a Thralls fan I'm interested in what you guys have to say about it.🤘
@@thrallsofmetal I'm definitely gonna be checking out this album. This review video just makes me want to check it out even more. You and Shred are a great review duo 🤘
Vocals felt very weak and uninspired no energy no charisma with music as wild and technical as this something with alot more energy would be better this sounds like someone having to do something vs wanting to
Nocturnus only really had interesting vocals on Thresholds when it was someone other than the drummer doing them. You just don't notice it on the first album because it's a bit burried in the mix.
@@SecretlyStarscream am taking bout this album specifically
Necrotic Nick- Yep, that was a big issue here. The music is challenging and complex as hell but the vocals are just lifeless. I liked Mike's vocals on The Key honestly. He was projecting more and there were different cadences and even some vocal inflections that didn't sound like he was constantly narrating a story.
He's also in his 60s
Necrotic Nick- 59 actually. Only about 3 years younger than Glen Benton who still sounds solid.
I’m back this is a 6 listen
I haven't read all the lyrics yet, but from the song titles alone I believe the concept is tied to the Sefirot (Tree of Life) in the Jewish Qabbalah concerning the emanations of creation (God). Not to be confused with Sephiroth from FFVII, lol
Necrotic Nick- I still got a lot of Lovecraftian vibes in the with some of the lyrics. They might be a tad convoluted in my opinion. There's just too much story to follow and with Mike's delivery he's really not making the stories jump off the page so to speak.
Hey guys sorry for calling you morons. I see your points now.
Necrotic Nick- Hey, no worries. We all hear music differently.
Mike Browning = legend
Necrotic Nick- That dude is a sick drummer for damn sure.
Nothing will top The Key also this album I loved it sorry dudes 4/5
Necrotic Nick- The Key is still the benchmark for me. I wish I liked this more but it didn't do much for me.
I feel like this album deserves an AI review. What do you say boys?
Necrotic Nick- Well, the album art is actually done by an artist and lyrically it's really not about AI... I'm honestly not sure what the hell the themes are honestly but I'd say it's more cosmic horror/ sci-fi on this one.
Fuck yeah my shred lord is back
Necrotic Nick- I think we'll be seeing more of him too when we get back from MDF too.
Thought this album was pretty good. Vocals do kinda sound like Mike Portnoy (Day after day, night after night...) a bit comedic but not the worst thing in the world.
Necrotic Nick- Musically there's a lot of cool stuff on it but it gets to be too much for me with how clustered it gets and the constant longwinded intros. The vocals are honestly just kinda lazy which bothers me because of how complex and intricate the songs are themselves. There's definitely more effort that could have been put in there in my opinion but that's just me.
@@thrallsofmetal That's totally fair. I did find the production quite lacklustre - inconsistent between some tracks too, "Ascension" sounded pretty muffled but "CephaloGod" straight after was comparatively quite clear.
Loved this album. But I do agree the outro was pretty pointless, that one did annoy me.
Necrotic Nick- I really wanted to like it but it really didn't do much for me. Yeah, there was no need for that outro. I still don't get that.
I got some hilarious news, The shitty band Falling in Reverse Burned themselves with Piro Technics
Necrotic Nick- Wow. That's something. I'll have to look into that.
I really enjoyed the first Nocturnus AD album and The Key is a stone cold classic. This one was quite a letdown, the vocals are pretty bad for the most part and killed a lot of it for me and its a little too all over the place.
2.5/5
The vocal delivery on this album is straight up comedic. The patterns are like what you would hear from someone doing a parody of an amateur vocalist who's way too confident for their level of skill and self-awareness.
Necrotic Nick- As much as I love Mike as a musician I can't defend these vocals. It just comes across lazy or just someone doing vocals for the album that didn't want to in the first place. There's legit no power behind them and the cadences are flat out robotic as hell.
@@thrallsofmetal Well said. It's the cadences in particular that drag on me. I can forgive or even enjoy a flawed delivery in other ways but to have each vocal pattern do something like just fall on downbeats over and over is insanely repetitive and boring.
Atheist also made kind of a clunky comeback with Jupiter. The new Nocturnus songs sound dated to my ears. Some of the vox sound like bad FNM too.
Necrotic Nick- I didn't mind Jupiter on musical level but I wasn't a fan of the production. This one, I think they just got lost in the sauce when it came down to the concepts and themes. It became too self indulgent and trying to communicate the stories as lyrics just didn't work at all here.
I think Jupiter was one of the better comeback albums and was more of a natural successor to Unquestionable Presence than Elements.
Who the fuck are these 2
Necrotic Nick- Pretty sure we said our names at the beginning of the video, man.
They sucked back in the day and they still do
Mike never really had great vocals. Killer album!
Necrotic Nick- Honestly, I like this vocals on The Key but this is barely a vocal performance. It's a narration and while I enjoyed some songs on here as a whole it was a bit of a chore to get through.