Genre: Black Metal
Country: Greece
Label: Argento Records
Year: 2017
Natvre’s 2nd full length album, Early Cvlts, is less than a week away from release and we were honoured to listen to it a few days earlier. So without further ado let’s jump right in. The album takes off with Tundra, an intro which combines both “industrial” as well as “natural” sounds, with synths being accompanied by wooden instruments and percussion, preparing an interesting setting for the rest of the album. The second track of the album -Night of the Sun- kicks hard from the start with aggressive riffs that bring bands like Watain and Darkthrone in mind. The same pattern with aggressive black metal riffing persists in the following tracks, Death of the Sun, Earthly Cults, as well as in Something Deeper that grows. All in all, the atmosphere is pretty dark and occult, which, I guess, is exactly what the band had in mind. If I’d were to choose a piece from “Early Cvlts”, that would be Geometrical Confuse, as it is a bit less aggressive and has some interesting DHG qualities as a track, which also go on to the next track, Prototype II. Prehistoric Technology and Speleogenesis combine to make the outro of the album, leaving the listener a feeling of fragile calmness that awaits something else. The positive thing on this release was the dark atmosphere that it maintained throughout. However, there were pitfalls which didn’t really let me enjoy this album as much as I’d like to, such us the repetitive structures and the fact that the tracks lack dynamic, something that is not complemented at all by the production of this release, which crushed any dynamic shifts that were left, making the album tiring to listen to as a whole. Also the extreme distortion on vocals, which was present throughout the album, sucked all life away from the performance. Generally it’s a solid album, which however doesn’t avoid certain pitfalls which the band’s previous release managed to.
4/6
