Nocturnal Depression - Deathcade (2017)^{Release ID: 11159}

Opening track is average... nothing grabs me. killer bass tone.
Vocals suck. I can't understand half of what he is saying. If it were not for the killer bass this opening track would just be a wall of white noise. 
Skipping to track 2 is not a good sign... 
Ick... this is terrible. Track 2 is just ... words escape me it's that bad. 

Let's try track 3 - Opens up with some promise.  but it's a tried-and-true riff. Vocals kill it... it's very average.

It's decent for Black metal but it's sub par for the course. Nothing grabs me or stands out. I don't care to finish this album. Extremely derivative and mundane.

Fans of the first wave: Bathory: Under the Sign of the Black Mark.
Fans of the second wave: Mayhem: "De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas" 
Me: Nocturnal Depression: Deathcade.

Allow me to explain myself, I am a very weird case when it comes to black metal. I certainly like to get raw and evil with the best of 'em but the stuff I really like is SDBM-Suicidal Depressive Black Metal. I like the other thing too, but that's for a diferent website. If I explain that my absolute favorite non-Metal band is the Cure, and that "Just Like Heaven" is my favorite song, well you might want to kick my ass, but good luck with that, and I think this makes a little more sense.

Deathcade is a SDBM offering from French Black Metalers Nocturnal Depression. It's actually a compilation of their best songs over a ten year period (hence the play on decade), all punched up and reproduced. The end result is a black metal album that just sounds frankly better (to my ears at least) than every thing else in the sub-genre. What you get is mid-to-slow tempo black metal, memorable melodies, great guitar riffs, a fat bass tone, and moody keys. Tremelo picking and aggressive drumming make their appearances as well. Lord Lokhraed is the man on vocals. His delievery is the usual black metal rasp but filtered through absolute melancholy, and it is dramatic but he never does that offputting crying thing that some bands in this niche opt for. He is full of anger, rage, pain, and misanthropy. He also has a genuine deformity on his fretting hand, I forget the medical name, but it's refered to as "lobster claw" in layman's terms. He makes incredible music despite this limitation, and the aesthetic enhances the whole theatric of the band. There are some interesting musical twists and turns in here as well, like "Spring" which is in a major key-a rarity in Black Metal.

Lyrics are of course melancholy, bleak, and angry, but they are also nostalgic, longing, and poetic. 

And this still somehow a pretty accessible album in all honesty. It's not exactly top 40 stuff  but it's well produced, and catchy enough that you can put somebody onto black metal with it. They are also amazing live from the footage available on youtube. If they ever come state-side, I don't care how far it is I am making that show!

Acquaint yourself with this if you have not.