Noctiferia: Death Culture (2010) Review

Noctiferia is a Slovenian band who started out as a symphonic black metal / blackened death metal band, but have evolved into an industrial extreme metal sound. Their fourth full length, Death Culture, was released earlier this year. Since I'm a fan of industrial metal, I thought I'd check it out.

The band sounds a bit like Static-X playing Behemoth material, with just a touch of Dimmu Borgir. At times, it almost sounds like mainstream stuff, but they never lose the extreme metal edge to things.

Industrial metal always sounds like a good idea, but rarely works in practice. The sound Noctiferia has developed is excellent, and works really well when they have a good song to back it up. "Monarch" and "Rust" are the highlights, with some of the most memorable moments on the album, as well as more variety of tempo and rhythm. There are a lot of other really good moments, to be sure, but some of it seems to blend together.

Still, there's not a whole lot of good industrial metal out there, and this is definitely good. Plus, Slovenia is one more peg in my map of the metal world.



The Verdict: This will likely appeal to fans of Dååth or extreme industrial metal in general. I give it 3.5 out of 5 stars.