Count De Nocte - Luctisonus Dolor - [Mad Lion Records]

2007-07-01

Count De Nocte are symphonic black metal band hailing from Tampere, Finland, who's this is their second full length release. It has some truly positive aspects about it, but is let down by one thing, which I'll specify later.

Musically we're in early Dimmu Borgir territory here, heavily orchestrated melodic black metal that pulls no punches in terms of aggression. It's quite fast, plenty of blast-beats, and that leads me to the first positive thing about the band – their drummer, a real powerhouse of skin-basher that adds a lot of energy to the album.

Another positive side is the vocals, they move from the higher black metal shrikes to lower-end death metal growls, and both come off well. There are some nice guitar lines in here as well, and the keyboardist knows what he's doing, but alas, there lies the rub.

While the sound is quite good here, there's one fatal flow to the thing that ruins the album for me, the keyboards are waaaaay to high in the mix, making some of the tracks sound like pop, while the guitars are way lower, losing a lot of the strength and aggression they should have. In this kind of music, this is a make or break element, and here it breaks. You can easily see these guys have what it takes, but they need a much smarter mix on their next album if they want to make this work.

Alon Miasnikov