Artist: Night’s Threshold
Country: USA
Label: Altare Productions
Formats: LP
Year: 2025
After two demos and three split releases, with Lament In Winter’s Night (Atrocity Altar, 2021), Efermus (Atrocity Altar, 2023) and Eerified Catacomb (Perverse Homage/His Wounds, 2023/2025) respectively, this anonymous duo from the USA reached the point at which they felt ready for a full-length record. More or less coinciding with a short European trek, the band presents ‘Nocturnal Obsession’, a 35-minute exercise in contemporary haunting and utterly bleak Black Metal, brought to you by Altare Productions.
The band might have taken their time before coming up with something new, considering the last two splits were released in 2023, on a musical level Night’s Threshold didn’t change all that much. Alright, if you’d take the time to listen those five previously released recordings, you’ll hear that the one demo or split is rawer and rougher than the other, but the very essence of the band is very much alive on each of them. And that is exactly the case here as well.
Yet, compared to for instance the split tape with Efermus, this first proper full-length album sounds remarkably good. Good, in the sense that the recording quality is raw, but not unbearable for the average Black Metal listener. The degree of noise, feedback and background hiss is pushed to a bare minimum to retain the band’s musical identity. But quite clearly still more than enough to fit very well in the Altare Productions tradition of raw, lo-fi and thoroughly unpolished underground Black Metal.
‘Nocturnal Obsession’ is yet another example of how great the current Raw Black Metal scene is. When the genre’s hype started to peak just at the end of the 10’s, there were so many bands that it was hard to keep up with what was going on, especially with so many people paying insane prices for records. Now that the hype has died down a bit, there’s only the “die hards” left; fans, bands and labels. This process of the survival of the fittest definitely left us some quality stuff. Now that we got rid of the trend hoppers we can focus on the latest recordings from bands like Drekavac, Orgy Of Carrion, Obskuritatem, Sanguine Relic, Black Cilice and Candelabrum.
Especially with the latter two Night’s Threshold has much in common. Both musically and the way the material was canned is quite reminiscent of what the two ultimate flagships of Portuguese Raw Black Metal has been doing for nearly a decade now. The bleak and repetitive character of the music in combination with the grainy production works very well for the American duo. It is no coincidence that Night’s Threshold is hitting the road with Candelabrum to perform their gloomy sonic noise on select European stages.
