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For a band that had initially manifest in such a storm of darkness, sparks and wonder as The Key, Nocturnus has sure gone limp throughout the remainder of their career, which at this point has borne the semblance of a shuddering light bulb suspended from the ceiling of some damp and forgotten basement. Their subsequent albums Thresholds and Eternal Tomb were decent, but really failed to expand the vision and momentum of that timeless debut, as if they were simply churning out the same repeated ideas like a taffy maker. Too many trips back to the well before the rain of inspiration, and the supply becomes rank and unpleasant to the taste.

Not too much of a surprise then, that in its death throes, the cult classic metal act is celebrated by a re-issue of demos, or previously unreleased fare that can turn someone a buck where said band's lack of productivity and creative shelf life are not sufficing. Enter The Nocturnus Demos, a repressing of the band's s/t Nocturnus demo (1987) and The Science of Horror (1988) which unfortunately doesn't have a hell of a lot to offer anyone familiar with The Key. Well, to be fair, the '87 demo has a handful of tracks that were abandoned to the past, but "B.C./A.D.", "Standing in Blood", "Undead Journey" and "Neolithic" are all meager representations of what they'd become on the superior, full-length journey, and "B.C./A.D." is presented here in two versions. Perhaps the most impressive aspect of this fan package is hearing just how brutal the band was for the late 80s period, and in this was I was reminded of Deicide's collection Amon: Feasting the Beast. Otherwise, expect crude tape productions and Browning vocals that feel disheveled and shouted compared to the brute professionalism he displayed on The Key.

As for the stuff you hadn't heard, there's the messy namesake "Nocturnus" which filters a few half-decent riffs through a garbage song structure; the brooding slog of "Unholy Fury" which bears some similarity to Hellhammer with speed breaks; or the blackish, brackish waters of "The Entity", with some wildly woven leads and sadly forgettable rhythm riffs. All of these hail from the band's '87 demo, granted, so less polish is to be expected, but as the sole 'attraction' to this compilation that cannot be experienced outside of The Key, they come up very short. Had The Nocturnus Demos featured superior production (which I must admit, Amon: Feasting the Beast did in places), or some later odds & ends like the s/t EP from 1993, then its value would be greater, but really there's just no point to listening to this outside of base curiosity. A pity when there were (and remain) so many outer and inner spaces that this band had yet to explore.

Verdict: Fail [4/10]

http://www.myspace.com/nocturnusofficial

As someone who had long given up on Nocturnus ever getting their shit together and giving us the followup to The Key that I've always desired, Ethereal Tomb was both a shock and a letdown. The shitty cover art and replacement 'logo' are among the most amateur crap I've ever seen, thus the aesthetic pleasure of their debut was not in the cards; and the music seems to lack the brutality of the formative Nocturnus. Yet, for all its flaws, this unexpected opus does one thing right: it sounds authentic, as if the band had never written the sophomore effort Thresholds and leaped straight into this. Not that the album is superior to that one, it comes up slightly short, but for at least a few songs, this was what I had long hoped to hear...

Louis Panzer remains within the band, as well as guitarists Mike Davis and Sean McNenney, so you can expect a lot of the same punchy, dark guitar tones and cheesy but moody atmospheric synthesizer pads strung out in the background. A lot of slower, grooving death/thrash rhythms comprise the better tracks like "Orbital Decay" and "Apostle of Evil", and the band is right to create breaks in the tension as with the intro to "Edge of Darkness". Much of the album does grow monotonous as it operates at a similar, sluggish tempo, but where the band experiments with their chugging backbone, in the warlike gait of "The Killing" or the proggy "Search for the Trident", the tracks seem tasteful if tame compared to the debut. The instrumental "Outland" is another strong point, though not without predecent ("Nocturne in Bm" from Thresholds), arches of vacuous guitar melodies curving against the synthetic landscape.

Conceptually, the band still wraps their imaginations about sci-fi, horror and archaeological subjects, and I'm rather glad they haven't abandoned this terrain, since its perhaps their most distinctive characteristic around the turn of the century. The lyrics are pretty good. The use of the keyboards was not quite so novel by this time as it was in death metal with The Key, yet it's also a positive that the band persist in using them atmospherically rather than noodling like Janne of Children of Bodom. The production here is functional, though not much better than Thresholds. All told, Ethereal Tomb is a substantial enough experience if you enjoyed the first two albums, but let it be said that more care could clearly have been placed in its packaging and details. The biggest drawback is that band so capable of progressing and expanding beyond their prior borders has done no such thing here: it's more of the same, a little less crushing, playing it timid. Playing it safe.

Verdict: Win [7/10] (leaving scored bones)

http://www.myspace.com/nocturnusofficial

As it turns out, things did not pan out so swimmingly for death geek magnates Nocturnus after their sophomore Thresholds. While it wasn't exactly what I'd call a flop, it failed to capitalize on the bright potential of The Key, and their time at an end, the band was cut from the Earache roster, and thus the same potential success of peers like Morbid Angel, Bolt Thrower and so forth. There was also a legal struggle within the band, and longtime drummer Mike Browning (who had also been in Morbid Angel during their demo phase) was fired and replaced with James Marcinek. Inevitably, the whole band would grind to a halt, but they did manage to slap a pair of tracks on a 7" (and later CD single) through a younger Moribund.

You'll notice immediately via glancing at its cover that the Nocturnus EP has shifted lyrical focus from the dire science fiction of its predecessors to Egyptian mysticism and horror, but this is not exactly a letdown, as its a natural topic for imaginative speculation and makes sense (the band had explored the past before). There are but two tracks here, "Possess the Priest" and then "Mummified", for a total of about 10 minutes of content comparable to the material on their full-length albums. I found Nocturnus to possess a denser, stronger tone than Thresholds, but unfortunately the music here, while similar, is just not that memorable, not even at the level of a "Climate Controller". The guitars are choppy and busily strung against the unimposing backdrop of the keys, and the tempos shift from a thrashing median to bursts of blast, but there are no real choice riffs here or moments of commendable atmosphere that reach out to you.

The band is as technically competent as ever, but the songwriting is simply uninspired, returns diminished from even the slightly lacking sophomore album. With all of the potential their path of exploration had laid out before them at the turn of the decade, one wonders why they went so limp. Was The Key an example of brutal, premature ejaculation? Could they no longer get it up? They could have turned out so much better than this. What a frustrating turn of events.

Verdict: Indifference [5.25/10]

http://www.myspace.com/nocturnusofficial

Despite the positive score I've given Thresholds, I actually consider it rather a disappointment compared to its predecessor The Key. While that was an anomaly among the emerging death metal background, a dark and atmospheric trip into apocalyptic artistry and sci-fi speculation, the Nocturnus sophomore doesn't really add a lot to the band's repertoire. Technical death/thrash with blunt vocals and hints of progression. It's clearly far less ominous than the debut, without any "BC/AD", "Neolithic" or "Lake of Fire" to grasp the listener with oppressive terror, but on the whole it's a consistent, level offering in much the same vein. The notation and intensity are simply not configured into the same show of force, though credit is due that the band hung on to their imaginative concepts and lyrics rather than sulk into the streaming gore of their peers.

The production here is arguably better or worse than the debut. Less muddled, but perhaps a slight too processed. The compositions are just as dynamic, but the mix here doesn't lend itself well, with a drab clarity to the guitar chugs that doesn't feel all that powerful. The initial salvo of songs are flush in style to The Key: "Climate Controller" having a few curious twists and turns, Louis Panzer's subtle synthesizer presence playing it perhaps too safe, but a nice lead tone and honestly one of the more memorable tracks on the album. "Tribal Vodoun" offers us a more hectic mysticism, with some writhing flurries of lead, but the keyboard tone sucks and the riffs are not all that striking. The "Nocturne in BM" is a nice instrumental with its glistening keys, but it waits too long to unleash its catchiest bit at the climax rather than hit us directly and then escalate off that to what might have been a far superior construction. While "Arctic Crypt" has some decent thrashing rhythms cutting through the din, I felt like it was aesthetically not a good match for its implied titular imagery.

The same for "Aquatica", which is conceptually like a Bioshock...before Bioshock. Sure, it opens with the streaming percolation samples we'd expect, and brings it back to the fore numerous times, but I'd have liked to hear more cheese in there. The riffs themselves are quite nice though with some epic leads, and "Subterranean Infiltrator" follows much the same motif and tempo sans the bubbling presence. "Alter Reality" and the closer "Gridzone" are both competent works, but like most that have come before them here, they too lack some of the morbid, threatening bluster of the debut, focused instead on their coherence and the quality of the leads. Mike Browning really works up a sweat on the latter and I found Dan Izzo's vocals to be marginally more passionate, so I'd say that qualifies it alongside "Climate Controller" as one of the album's best.

As a massive consumer of science fiction literature, films and gaming, I had no other choice but to appreciate a band like Nocturnus which looked forward to the stars, eschewing the grime and smear of the majority of their splattered statesmen. If only the execution had been equivalent to the vision, this might have been one of the greatest death metal acts in history, because the possibilities were limitless to the amount of conceptual albums they could have written. Such a cosmos of synthesized sounds and samples to affix to their riffing! Unfortunately, they were only able to produce one great album in their time (The Key). Not to say that Thresholds isn't still interesting or worth hearing, because it is, but the production is rather stagnant and the songs do not hold up quite so well.

Verdict: Win [7.25/10] (weapons burst in sync)

http://www.myspace.com/nocturnusofficial

Nocturnus
The Nocturnus Demos
United States of America
2004
Death Metal

01. B.C./A.D.
02. Standing in Blood
03. Neolithic
04. Undead Journey
05. Nocturnus
06. B.C./A.D.
07. Unholy Fury
08. The Entity

Mp3
320 kbps
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Nocturnus
Thresholds
United States of Amrica
1992
Death Metal

01. Climate Controller
02. Tribal Vodoun
03. Nocturne in Bm (Instrumental)
04. Arctic Crypt
05. Aquatica
06. Subterranean Infiltrator
07. Alter Reality
08. Gridzone

Mp3
320 kbps
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Nocturnus
The Key
United States of America
1990
Death Metal

01. Lake of Fire
02. Standing in Blood
03. Visions from Beyond the Grave
04. Neolithic
05. Before Christ/After Death
06. Andromeda Strain
07. Droid Sector
08. Destroying the Manger
09. Empire of the Sands

Mp3
320 kbps
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Nocturnus
Ethereal Tomb
United States of America
2000
Death Detal

01. Orbital Decay
02. Apostle of Evil
03. Edge of Darkness
04. The Killing
05. Search for the Trident
06. Paranormal States
07. The Science of Horror
08. Outland (Instrumental)

Mp3
320 kbps
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Nocturnus
Nocturnus
United States of America
1993
Death Metal

01. Possess the Priest
02. Mummified

Flac file
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Note: Second track is at 6m04s