Monday, April 15, 2013

Lecherous Nocturne - Behold Almighty Doctrine


Sure to incite statements of "riff-salad," South Carolina's Lecherous Nocturne's newest album is as schizophrenic as you would expect. A whirlwind of chaotic riffing, drumming, and midrange vocals, Behold Almighty Doctrine is a tough record to bite, and not for these reasons. If this kind of music daunted me I wouldn't make the claim that technical death metal was my favorite subgenre.

Behold Almighty Doctrine is populated by shorter length tracks that would probably benefit from a bit of grindcore aggression. One thing I noticed is that while many different riffs are cycled in and spammed at the listener, few of them stick. The vocal and rhythms on "Bring The Void," the slowed down mid-section and ending of (album favorite) "Archeopteryx," and the fills on "Lesions From Vicious Plague" are the closest you'll ever get for memorability. Other tracks while chaotic are lacking in aggressive energy where even something as simple as a d-beat could give the listener a reason to get into the music. The dry guitar tone and heavily palm-muted chromatic riffing is partly to blame, but there seems to be an overall lack of harmony here. I'm sure the bass audibly imitating the melody for the majority of tracks doesn't help either.

And those cheesy synth and piano parts need to go. Including the useless "Intro" and "Outro."

Instead Behold Almighty Doctrine falls into the same rut that bands like Hate Eternal do. The music lacks any sort of memorability, and not in the form of shitty half-baked hooks or repeated chorus song structuring. The number of riffs that are crammed into each track isn't enormous compared to some other bands in the subgenre, but when so little of them are quality it's hard to call it "songwriting" so much as just jamming out some pseudo-technical bullshit.

5.5 out of 10

Tracklisting:
1. Intro
2. Ouroboros Chains
3. Bring The Void
4. Archeopteryx
5. Those Having Been Hidden Away
6. Prelude #2
7. Judgments And Curses
8. Lesions From Vicious Plague
9. Caustic Vertigo
10. Creation Continuum
11. Outro

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