Nocturnal Bloodlust is back with ARGOS, its fourth album.
Created in 2009 in Japan, the band always melted Deathcore, Metalcore and Visual Kei. In 2022, Hiro (vocals), Masa (bass), Natsu (drums), Valtz (guitar) and Yu-taro (guitar) are ready to continue in the line of their last EP.
The album begins with The Devastated World, a quite worrying intro which melts choirs, modern elements and the coming of Red Soil’s rhythmic, which is a very effective composition that melts raw and jerky violence with a hooking dissonance. The vocalist’s screams are perfectly integrated to those aggressive riffs, but also to the devastating break and the ambient melancholy, then the band welcomes Luiza on Straight to the Sky to offer us a contrast between their raw violence cut by airy break, and more appeasing clean vocals parts. The song will be a perfect opportunity to break your neck, just like on Life Is Once and its groovy jerks which impel us to the most violent mosh. Clean vocals and howlings are melted on the hooking rhythm part which becomes extremely aggressive until the last moment, letting the catchy final driving us to Dagger, a super heavy composition which comes back to the band’s firsts influences. The devastating sound borrows from Hardcore and Beatdown for some really visceral breaks, then THE ARGOS offers a dark and quite theatrical rest before Cremation comes to crush us. For this majestic song, the band called PK (Prompts) for some heavy parts, feeding a smashing and sometimes dissonant contrast which comes to life on the whole song, then which lets place to Bow Down and its very modern influences. The song turns out to be genuinely hooking, linking moshparts and jerky riffs while letting some space for Electro samples, then ONLY HUMAN makes us come back to the basis of Deathcore while adding Post-Harcore choruses. Eris comes next with its raw Hardcore roots to walk with the obvious heavyness, then a cybernetic break announces the comeback of the unchained rage while madness still reigns over the song, while THE ONE definitely reconnects with softer Visual Kei influences without denying the heavy Deathcore basis. The melting can sound opposed, but it stays really coherent, offering raw rage moments as well as hooking softness, then the album is closed with Reviver and its melodic dissonance to make place to a thick and syncopated rhythmic. The cong reminded me the band’s early material, which was dyed with obvious madness and rage, while the Prog-oriented break is the exact opposite.
Even if its style evolves, Nocturnal Bloodlust stays anchored to its roots. With Argos, the band confirms its Metalcore turn, without disowning its Visual Kei influences and its violent basis while conjugating all the universes for an extremely heavy and effective output.
90/100