Noctum: The Seance

The Seance by Swedish debutants Noctum is as convincingly retro as any album I can remember. Stick on a late 70's Budgie album next to this effort and other than the obviously modern production values, telling which was recorded in 1978 and which was recorded in 2011 would be virtually impossible. What that leaves is an album that will therefore split opinion, with those who hanker over some unabashed, straight laced Doom with no pretentions set to join hands at The Seance table. For others and in truth myself included, this is just too simple and unambitious to do anything other than while away three quarters of an hour in decent, if unspectacular fashion.

Lacking the sludgy feel of more "up to date" Doom, Noctum head for a clean guitar sound that does certainly stay true to its roots, but it also means that everything is ever so polite and civilised and in the end is that really what Metal is all about? The vocals of David Indelöf also fall into the "nice" category, with his almost warbling falsetto coming on like Master Of Reality's Chris Goss, without the lived-in character. He is far from being a poor singer, in fact he's probably too good an actual singer for what should be gritty down and dirty Metal. Rather than smash your door down and stealing your youngest daughter, Indelöf sounds far more likely to knock and wait patiently for a reply so he can honourably ask for her hand in marriage! In their defence, this does seem to be exactly the sort of approach that Noctum are looking to achieve and what they do, they do very well indeed, matching Sabbath riffs and clonking cowbells to pounding, if standard rhythm section work.

So it is pass marks all round, but with this debut effort Noctum are neither likely to go to the top of the class, nor piss their teacher off with their unruly behaviour and that can't be a good thing.

Track Listing
1. The Seance
2. Fortune Teller
3. Insomnia
4. Den Onda Trollpacken
5. Mistress
6. Lucifers Way
7. Remain
8. Children Of Darkness

Added: December 8th 2011
Reviewer: Steven Reid
Score:
Related Link: Noctum MySpace
Hits: 2486
Language: english

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