DGR’S YEAR-END REVIEW ROUNDUP (PART 2): NIGHT CROWNED, GHOSTS OF ATLANTIS, MORTIS CRUENTAS, SECRET OF DARKNESS

This isn’t DGR‘s annual year-end list. That might yet come. This is the second Part of a four-Part collection of reviews that we started rolling out yesterday, focusing on 2023 albums we hadn’t managed to review before. You’ll find his full explanation for what he’s doing here at the beginning of Part I.

 

 

Night Crowned – Tales

That Sweden’s Night Crowned have even reached the point where they get to release a third album is impressive. Given that they were a group whose first full-length hit during the height of the pandemic and have had to navigate somehow maintaining a career in that time means that they’ve had an absolute fucker of a mountain to climb over.

Truthfully, any band that has had to somehow make sense of the previous ‘lost’ three years and managed to survive deserve some sort of applause, given the fuck-awful luck and shithead mismanagement on a global scale that led to that point.

In any other world you could easily have imagined Night Crowned rapidly gaining a fanbase on the strength of their first album, a good combination of melodic riffs, molten-hot black metal playing, and impressive vocal work that ran a bit overlong but was otherwise one hell of a debut. Follower Hädanfärd stuck the band back in the forge and came out even more blackened, covered in ash and singing in the native tongue – because let’s be honest, is it a black metal release if a writer-dork from California isn’t having an absolute motherfucker of a time trying to both type and pronounce half the song titles? – and adding even more to an already impressive slate of work.

As you would expect and as is common with many tri-partite releases, the group’s newest album Tales splits the difference between the first two. Unleashed in early November via Noble Demon, Tales claws its way back to the melodic black work of the debut album – and yes, even some slightly more approachable melodeath riffage – and continues the sort of teeth-gnashing ferocity of the followup. Night Crowned pull a little harder on the spectacle lever for Tales yet keep things to a razor-sharp forty-three-ish (bless us, napkin math) minutes across eight impressively meaty songs here.

Night Crowned stretch their artistic muscles a bit on Tales, hewing to the album’s loose titular concept and trying to make each of the eight songs distinct from one another. They’re a little longer than usual – though Tales is still the slimmest of the three albums so far – but that mostly boils down to each of the eight songs trying hard to be a distinct spectacle.

Night Crowned call in reinforcements from both singer Therése Thomsson for vocals on two songs and Thyrfing frontman Jens Rydén for Tales‘ opening number. The band have long proven that they can create a blistering melodic assault, and there’re still a few of those immolators packed into Tales – “Nattramm” in particular seems to arrive right on time as if the band were asking if you had gotten too comfortable in the melodic excess of Tales‘ opening two songs – but Night Crowned also seem to have recognized that you can make extremity mundane when it quickly becomes your only calling card. Thus, the group’s trademarks are a little more spread out, and given the expansive nature of Tales, that makes sense.

It’s still a recognizable Night Crowned disc but the hooks are surprisingly sharp and there’re a few earworms here that’ll carve their way into your brain as opposed to the general ‘face held in front of a blast furnace’ feeling that they’re already skilled at creating. Tales splits the difference between its two older siblings and still manages to expand upon many of the ideas shared between the two. It’s an impressive offering from a band who seem to exist by sheer force.

https://nightcrowned.bandcamp.com/album/tales
http://www.facebook.com/nightcrowned

 

 

Ghosts Of Atlantis – Riddles Of The Syncophants

It’s exciting to see a band like Ghosts Of Atlantis take a shot at a follow-up album because often it seems like groups with a flair for the dramatic and theatrical flame out just as quickly as they appear. The overhead, budgeting, and general ambition have to play a huge part in it, and when you make your group into a spectacle like Ghosts Of Atlantis are doing you can imagine a lot of external stressors pushing to turn them into a ‘one and done’.

That’s not the case here, as Ghosts Of Atlantis have unleashed an album as ambitious as their first full-length release – this time on Hammerheart Records and under the name Riddles Of The Syncophants, for those who’re worried that the intentionally mysterious concept from the first album might’ve disappeared.

Ghosts Of Atlantis continue to aim big on their followup album, creating what you might expect from a proper Hollywood sequel wherein this is an album of ‘more’. They write bigger songs here, the symphonics splash larger here – enough that you’re going to need to post a splash-zone warning – and the martial rhythms that comprised much of the group’s first album are back and hit with bigger force here as well. They’re also all over the place on Riddles Of The Syncophants, translating to a bunch of meaty mid-tempo songs that relentlessly pound forward enough that the band could be assumed to be portraying an army.

Of course given the wider reaches of Riddles Of The Syncophants as a whole it would make sense that the songs would be equally as far-reaching in concept. They are, as the even spread of singles that were unleashed ahead of the album — “Sacramental”, “The Lycaon King”, and “Lands Of Snow” — all approach a story from wildly different viewpoints and places in time.

On top of Ghosts Of Atlantis‘ love for massive chorus singalongs – the clean/harsh vocal interplay has gotten even more focus this time around – a good part of Riddles Of The Syncophants is dedicated to scene-setting and character placement. For their sophomore album, the band have made sure to have a lot of moving parts among their consistent rumble and symphonic blast.

It is interesting, though, when Ghosts Of Atlantis shift away from the massive shamble and mythological work to just let loose with some ferocity, how surprisingly strong it is. They do that at multiple points throughout Riddles but the most concentrated segments of it happen in “Empires Burn At Dawn” and “A Maiden’s Scorn” – which may actually be making a strong case for the band to put their foot to the floor just a bit more often. Songs like those two help keep things within Riddles Of The Syncophants dynamic, so that alongside the 1-2-3-4 hammering of the “…of the syncophants” lyrical motif that pops up throughout the album you’ll have more clawing into your skull.

Ghosts Of Atlantis’ desire to make themselves larger than life keeps them as a project to watch, and with two albums – and a couple of singles – under their belt, they’ve already amassed a healthy collection of musical mythology to dish out.

https://hammerheart.bandcamp.com/album/riddles-of-the-sycophants
https://www.facebook.com/GhostsOfAtlantisofficial

 

 

Mortis Cruentus – Destroyers Of Humanity

We’ve spent a lot of time swimming around in the inky-depths of albums so what if we dove into an EP for a little bit instead? Hailing from Spain, Mortis Cruentus are a long-running black metal/melodeath hybrid with a keen sense of viciousness belying their otherwise straightforward assault. Destroyers Of Humanity is their newest EP, arriving six years after the group’s previous release – a full-length way back in 2017 known as Hellthrone.

It is actually only the group’s second EP, giving the band an even two-two split between full-length albums and EPs up to this point. Asking for a comfortable fifteen minutes of your time, Mortis Cruentus rip through three songs of black metal, death metal, and all of the fun nitpicking subgenres we can get into in between.

Surprisingly technical at times and far-reaching, Destroyers Of Humanity‘s three songs stand fairly distinct from one another. The titular opening song is quick and deft, with a shrieking vocal style and interwoven guitar work that at times is as percussive as the drumming is, if it isn’t transforming itself into a finger workout like it does in the wandering riff section closer to the end of the song.

Noctem‘s Beleth makes an appearance in the much more traditional – and symphonic – blackened death metal song “In Your Darkness…We Will Rise”. If you placed money on this being the song most likely to burn your house to the ground you’d walk away a knowing winner… and with a smoking hole where your house used to be. Its opening section alone hits like having a brick tossed at you from a moving car after the multi-faced “Destroyers Of Humanity” before it, and that’s not counting the multiple melodic lines in the song that start appearing in its chorus-segment.

“Walls Of Desolation” splits the difference between the two, though comes off a little punchier at times given its main gallop and rumbling rhythm segment. It alternates between being the more melodic black metal song of the three but also has a pretty solid and sinister sounding midpoint where the song briefly becomes absolute destruction.

With those three songs gathered, Destroyers Of Humanity is a solid hit that blasts between a handful of extreme metal genres with seemingly no effort and kicks out enough melodic leads to keep people coming back to its darkened atmospheres.

https://mortiscruentus.bandcamp.com/album/destroyers-of-humanity-2
http://www.facebook.com/mortiscruentus

 

 

Secret Of Darkness – Blacksun Rising

There’s always something to be said for the act of bravery that is releasing an album in December, as you run the risk of being lost in the flood of year end of bullshit. Likewise though, I do try to keep a special eye out for such releases since overlooking them because you were too busy putting numbers next to album titles always felt like a little bit of an asshole maneuver. Occasionally you’ll even have an album upend your whole list as a December release, like Dormant Ordeal did with The Grand Scheme Of Things back in 2021. Will Secret of Darkness be the group to do so this year?

Probably not. Was Blacksun Rising a pleasant surprise and a fun discovery to wantonly crash into while falling down a bunch of YouTube rabbit holes and seemingly hitting every divot on the way down to the bottom? You bet. If you love pinch harmonics, guitar squeals, and otherwise shredded guitars, is there room for you here? My friend, grab yourself a chair because have I got an opening salvo of songs for you when it comes to the first four tracks of Blacksun Rising.

Much like Mortis Cruentus earlier on in whatever the fuck you want to call this thing when it’s all said and done, Secret Of Darkness are in the alchemist role when it comes to extreme metal genre-hybridizing. Guitar-driven and surprisingly sleek, Secret Of Darkness whip their way through ten songs like nothing, dishing out punishing rhythms and melodeath lines alongside black metal inspired vocal work and atmospherics with about equal measure.

All in the service of evil and with plenty of blastbeats to spare, Secret Of Darkness provide many an opportunity for each of its chosen musicians to show off a bit – though the guitar work on this album is very much at the forefront, hence my joking about how the first four songs of the album after its intro are chock full of guitar-shred.

“Structures Of All Existence”, “Unlimtied Entropy”, and “Rays Of Uncertainty” have enough squalling guitar work and pinched to hell and back strings that even Roadrunner-era Killswitch Engage would walk away jealous. Even later on in the album during “Brave New Disaster” and the opening of “Inctractituted Bled” the band can’t help but deliver a dive-bomb guitar lead.

Once you get past the clear amount of fun that Secret Of Darkness‘ guitarists are having, you find yourself with a solid-as-a-mountain riff avalanche of an album with plenty of belfry-burning vocals to match. If we had to guess it probably flies in the face of the ominous clouds that Secret Of Darkness are conjuring on Blacksun Rising, but this album has proven to be a tremendous amount of fun.

https://secretofdarkness.bandcamp.com/album/blacksun-rising-2
https://www.facebook.com/secretofdarkness