Nocturnal Hollow - A Whisper of an Horrendous Soul

NOCTURNAL HOLLOW - A Whisper of an Horrendous Soul (RAW SKULL Records / REDEFINING DARKNESS - CD 2019)

Venezuela are no wimps, they also have their Swedish sounding death metal band haha! Of course there will always be moaners, who will say that such bands are useless and it's just better to listen to your old Dismember or Entombed albums rather than a band from Venezuela or where else, which is influenced by them. I don't care, and as long as the music is good, it doesn't matter to me if it's original or not, if it's influenced by band X or not, or if the band is from Venezuela or Thailand - if the music speaks to me and sounds great, that's all what matters. And that's exactly the case with Nocturnal Hollow, whose "A Whisper of an Horrendous Soul" I've been listening to for the past few hours. This band doesn't sin with originality and basically redo what has already been done in the Swedish death metal more than dozens times before. But they have enough skills, guts, creativity and ideas to bring us great old school death metal onslaught.

When checking Nocturnal Hollow for the first time, I was actually very surprised to hear that such band comes from Venezuela. You know, this country isn't known for its death metal scene. I don't even remember if I've ever heard any bands from there? And then Nocturnal Hollow comes in with their CD and "wow" - they really do know how to shred with OSDM shit. They even came up with that characteristic production (HM-2 rules, we all know!), which immediately will let you think of the Swedish death metal scene. And it really is not bad at all. There's fuckin cool, shredding riffage, brutality and viciousness, properly powerful production and obviously also some more melodic bits, which provide more diversity into Nocturnal Hollow music. Sometimes you can obviously have a déjà vu feeling and some riffs or ideas can remind you the classic Dismember and Entombed stuff, or some younger bands like Paganizer. As I wrote earlier though, "A Whisper of an Horrendous Soul" is good enough to defend itself.  Nocturnal Hollow sticks to the very traditional patterns and that’s good. When I listen to songs like “Master of Invidious” I am bought absolutely. Or “God of All Deaths”, which has that cool melodic, epic feel similar to bands like Just Before Dawn. Very cool stuff, yes!

After checking some information about Nocturnal Hollow, I was surprised to see that "A Whisper of an Horrendous Soul" is already their fifth album. I don't think I've ever heard about this band before. Maybe if I did, I didn’t put much attention to this name. But I will definitely try to grab some of their previous efforts also, if they're as good as this album, then they're worth having.

Standout tracks: “Master of Invidious”, “God of All Deaths”, “World Decay”

Verdict: 70/100