Someone's been listening to their King Diamond. Oh, what the hell… there are so many Venom, Bathory and Celtic Frost clones flitting about – not to mention Sabbath, Slayer and even Blue Oyster Cult – that it's about time someone picked up the Mercyful Fate torch and ran with it.
In a way Noctum more closely resemble Black Rose, the 70's Dutch band that King Diamond fronted before Fate. The rhythms lock into a proto-doom blues boogie and pretty much stay in that gear, while the dual guitars ply taste rather than pizzazz. The primary Mercyful Fate influence comes courtesy of David Indelöf's dead ringer vocals – his work on "Resurrected in Evil" in particular could easily pass for a lost Black Rose demo – but ex-Witchcraft/Count Raven drummer Fredrik Jansson brings a well-rounded, working knowledge of vintage blues rock to the table as well: "Deadly Connection", an instrumental, is anchored by a thundering "Radar Love"-style backbeat, and "The Revisit" melds Sabbath with Jethro Tull, although the flute-work gets abandoned fairly quickly without a… revisit.
Final Sacrifice is too straightforward in its blues + NWOBHM formula to really qualify as "occult rock", but do we really need yet another band saturating that market anyway? In spite of their prior debut album being titled The Séance there is neither an abundance of acoustic guitars nor spooky, candlelit imagery being bandied about here; any occult imagery is limited to Indelöf's singing and his horror b-movie lyrics. Just don't let the no frills approach fool you: this is one of the best retro metal albums released this year.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T09VvKLZ-MY[/youtube]
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