Nocturnus A.D. - Paradox

Reactivating under a slightly rebranded moniker due to complicated line-up and legal issues, one of technical progressive death metal’s earliest pioneers, Nocturnus AD, returns from its second, and now longest, absence with Paradox.
Rightfully confident in their assessment of the level of demand for the type of sci-fi-obsessed techdeath in the current era, the band don’t really depart very far, if at all, from the unabashedly epic and keyboard-laden madness they built their reputation upon with The Key and Thresholds and on which they base their case for their return to the fold after nearly two decades. And the case the band makes is indeed a strong one, as they recapture rather fully the essence of what made The Key so groundbreaking when it was released.
And though the market they released this album into is saturated partially by the type of sci-fi techdeath they helped lay they groundwork for, Paradox is a fine showing of the lasting quality of the band’s original vision with the style they employed.
Shying away at no point from the grandiose, however campy their methods at finding it may be, the band certainly command respect for their sustained ability to conjure feelings of grandiosity through old-school, heavily thrash-influenced death metal while consistently impressing at a technical level. Songs like “Precession of the Equinoxes” and the epic “The Return of the Lost Key” integrate synthetic strings and even chimes within the perfect, open spaces to add the cherry on top of the fantastical feel the band pry for.
But it’s not just the sparkling chimes that conjure the fantasy. The dynamic thrash elements and old-school thrash structures also help provide a majestic, sci-fi atmosphere. I particularly like how the chimes and sustained strums of guitar make way for a glorious introductory solo on “The Return of the Lost Key”. The keyboard strings on “Aeon of the Ancient Ones” also produces a bombastic and impending build for the band to explode from into their natural techdeath wizardry.
My favorite song though is probably the chaotic “The Bandar Sign”, which features these loud, buzzy keyboard whirs that sound like the laser blasters of an alien spaceship firing at will and up the intensity of the blast beats and angular riffing below them in the mix. And even the songs without as much novelty going for them are certainly not lazy copy-pastes of a formula either as the band use their naturally dynamic compositional tendencies to pad each song with the viscera needed to uphold the album’s wild aura.
Yeah, as similar and predictable this album is to a degree, it’s definitely not a bad comeback by any means, and even in the current, densely populated death metal landscape it manages to offer something new and interesting while pointing to and honoring the band’s legacy as it makes another excellent addition to it.
Pew pew lasers/10

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