Following Celestial Sword‘s release of its second album Dawn of the Crimson Moon in 2021, this enigmatic U.S. black metal solo project released a flurry of splits in what remained of that year, and one more in 2022, but then nothing in 2023. The pause suggested that some new evil was in the works, and sure enough, it has taken shape in the form of a new album named Nocturnal Divinity that’s now set for release by Death Prayer Records on March 1st.
For those who might only now be learning about Celestial Sword, Nocturnal Divinity provides a fine jumping-on point, as well as an enticement to go back and experience the music that preceded it. As for jumping on, you can do that right now because today we present a full stream of the new record.
Of course, if you want to pause mid-jump, suspended in air, you can peruse our thoughts about where you’ll be landing on the far side.
photo by Peter Beste
True to its name, the new album is a supernatural nightside journey, a venture into realms beneath a blood-colored moon where vampiric entities practice hideous enchantments and no other life is safe.
“Lugubrious Entrance of the Vampyric Entity” (written by Nightshade) provides the album’s chilling overture, through a haunting organ melody, ghostly voices, and the clang of spilling bells. And then, with a quick percussive countdown, the inhuman beasts smell blood and surge in “Blood Moon Elegy”.
There, drums clatter, hammer, and stagger and the bass murmurs beneath vast waves of sound that find an intersection between flesh-scraping abrasion and celestial gleaming. But the sandpaper grit in the riffing is less hostile than the shattering screams that vent the lyrics with hydrochloric acid intensity.
As those waves roll over the listener, both caustic and glorious, they generate feelings of both awe-struck wonder and abysmal hopelessness. The drums beat a solemn march and solemn chants echo in the midst of the cacophonous blood-letting tirades, along with symphonic horns and a meandering flute… and fracturing chimes.
Now you’re fully within the album’s nightmare realms, and the signposts of each successive song tell you, the fearful wanderer, that there’s no turning back. The music continues to drench the senses in grand cascades of preternatural glory and stricken grief even as the drums feed the listener’s pulse and the voices shriek in fury and pain. Keyboards elegantly ring, beckoning and dancing, inviting us to join their dance, and maybe to forget (to our peril) that monsters still hunger for our throats.
photo by Peter Beste
There’s an interlude track in the fourth position. Rooted in dungeon synth, it’s somehow even more frightening than the voracious derangement of the vocals, because it seems to extinguish whatever warmth may have been furnished by huddled bodies around guttering fires.
A second interlude emerges on the other side of “Scarlet Moon Enchantment I & II”, the album’s longest and most frighteningly lavish (and strangely pastoral) piece, in which a new voice wails in striking tones (in addition to those that screech and snarl), and the venomously electrifying whirl of “Crimson Embrace of the Nightborne Serpent” (all is red in these realms, where it isn’t black as pitch), which adds imperious growls to the vocal bestiary. That second interlude (by Ancient Iron) is truly a terrible spell, as if the album needed more terrors.
There’s still no turning back, in part because of the horrors still gaining on you from behind and in part because of the strange seductions that still lie ahead in the remaining four tracks. Not for naught does Death Prayer refer to the music as being “drenched in a rich and raw romanticism”, and the galloping, bounding, and skipping beats continue to be a primitive and primal compulsive force, but if we haven’t already hammered the point home, let’s be clear:
Above all else these remaining songs are frightening — even the deeply haunting drift of the organ-led instrumental piece “Le Sang De La Nuit” and the dreadful plague processional that unfolds under the name “Last Dance of the Night God”. Where your journey finally ends is beneath “Tattered Banners of The Dark Order”, another instrumental piece (also written by Ancient Iron). Both grand and disconsolate, it’s like the voice of a tomb prepared where you’ll spend a very cold eternity.
If you paused this long, mid-air, now you can land with both feet on the other side, but not on any solid ground:
Celestial Sword had help in creating Nocturnal Divinity. In addition to names already mentioned, drums were performed by Drugoth (who also contributed vocals on “Waves of Deafening Soliloquy”); Zofie Siege added vocals in “Scarlet Moon Enchantment I-II” and “Le Sang De La Nuit; and M. of Lamp of Murmuur/Silent Thunder did the mixing and mastering. The cover art was created by Karmazid (Urfaust / Lamp of Murmuur).
Death Prayer will release the album in two different limited vinyl editions, in a Digipack CD edition, and digitally. You can explore the options via the links below.
We also want to note that Celestial Sword and Death Prayer Records will be hosting an on-line listening party for the album on March 1st at 7:00 PM GMT, and both will be present to answer questions. To RSVP, go here.
PRE-ORDER:
https://deathprayerrecords.bandcamp.com/album/nocturnal-divinity
https://www.deathprayerrecords.com
CELESTIAL SWORD:
https://celestialsword.bandcamp.com/