Band:	Necronoclast
Album:	Monument
Style:	Black metal
Website:	http://www.necronoclast.com/
Release date:	May 03, 2007
A review by:	Baz Anderson

01. Resurrection
02. Monument To The Dead
03. Mourning Life
04. Cauterised
05. Severance
06. Vault

Necronoclast are a promising new black metal band that manifested itself from the dark mind of one individual, hailing from the country that is Scotland. "Conceived" in the year 2003 we have a solo project producing cold and gloomy black metal. This album was completed early 2006, but problems made sure it could not be released until now.

The shorter opening track is an ambient, overly slow track that can just be skipped because the meat of the album is much more enjoyable for what it is. This is all cold black metal, it has the classic, grim sounding guitar droning in the back somewhere, but also accompanied by another guitar more towards the front of the mix that on occasions winds out some nice sounding melodies that contrast with the rest of the dark atmosphere. The vocals are a cross between roars and agonising screams and are done well also.

"Monument To The Dead" kicks the album into a decent gear, but "Mourning Life" takes it up a few more gears. The music is faster, the snare is being bashed away into oblivion at a macabre pace, the melodies and the whole song structure are much better here as well and really make you feel like you have been through some kind of necromantic adventure. Ambient passages and then pounding drumming and aggressive vocals the next minute make this nearly nine and a half minutes opus the one to watch out for on the album.

The rest of the album tends to drop down gears to more like the sombre mood similar to the works of Burzum, but these songs with less tempo, less bite to them and more gloom are unfortunately not near as interesting or exciting as "Mourning Life". Fans of Burzum and slower, gloomy metal may indeed find this album an overall enjoyable experience, but if like me you prefer music that has lots of things going on and attempts to keep your attention glued to the music, then maybe the album won't be something you will reach for many times in the future although it is good in it's own way.

For a first full length album this is something it's creator can be proud of, it is produced well and has some nice bits in there, this will only appeal to hardcore black metallers though. It will be interesting to see how the next album goes, if it will steer more towards the more up-tempo material, or the slower, more atmospheric side.