Adoration of the Blade

No, there's nothing 'wrong' with it. Nothing particularly offensive about its sounds, nor incompetent in its instrumentation nor, in some ways, its songwriting. But Lecherous Nocturne's 'Adoration Of The Blade' has a problem specifically because it doesn't manage to excite even feelings of revulsion in the listener. This is death metal that is beyond 'by the book'; it composes the entirety of the book itself, adhering so strictly to convention that the disc may as well vanish in thin air.

This album slips in and out like an assassin's blade, but instead of the desirable reaction of, say, death, there's only a mild feeling of dissatisfaction left after the tiny 24-minute running time is elapsed. Oh yes, there are riffs: riffs and double bass and growls and screams and the expected modicum of aggression, but it all culminates to nothing more than an empty shell of death metal, that despite taking note from legends such as Deicide or Suffocation summons none of the discernible brutality of such progenitors. There's just not much here.

Technically, the music is skilled, and when it comes to production, every little flourish pops out with crystal clarity befitting of greater artists. But no clever song titles can make this material stick out in my mind more than any other terribly generic band. Perhaps something approaching brutality pops up in songs like 'Whorrified', but that just makes the overwhelmingly prosaic content on this CD that much more distressing to the typical metalhead. What's going on here? How did these guys manage to create something so... for lack of a better word, uninteresting?

Sorry kids, there's nothing to see here. And I mean absolutely nothing. Move right along, and give 'Adoration Of The Blade' not a moment's thought.

(Originally written for www.vampire-magazine.com)