Artist: Order Of Nosferat
Country: Finland / Germany
Label: Purity Through Fire
Formats: LP / Cassette Tape / CD
Year: 2024
As enchanting and confusing the shapeshifting entity of a vampire can be, the same can be said about this Finnish/German band. With each new recording Order Of Nosferat seem to slightly reinvent their musical formula. In earlier work the band sounded quite mellow and melody-based, resulting in a melancholic, almost soothing sort of Black Metal that had a certain hypnotic power to it. But the band’s latest album, ‘Vampyric Wrath Unleashed’ sounded fiercer and was an overall pacier affair that fitted perfectly to its moniker. With their newest album, the duo that comprises Order Of Nosferat, seems to have found a rather interesting balance in between two worlds.
Previous albums like ‘Nachtmusik’ and the aforementioned ‘Vampyric Wrath Unleashed’ carried a title that really fitted the music like a glove, but this time it is not so much the case. At least, it depends on the way you look at it. It basically is all up to how you define “grace”. Taking a somewhat philosophical approach, one could argue that a vampire’s life is basically deprived of grace and doomed to live in the shadows of a joyful life. But from a more practical point of view, namely the musical one, then I can only say that ‘The Absence Of Grace’ is an album full of appealing grace.
‘The Absence Of Grace’ is an album that contains all the best parts of the recordings that preceded it. Besides the more pacey parts that accompanies some gritty riffs and a grainy guitar tone, it has the same beautiful melodies and, above all, the album has the same melancholic atmosphere that attracted me the most in any of Order Of Nosferat’s previous work. These guys seem to have very little difficulties in matching all these separate ingredients together and creating a coherent whole that sounds equally alluring but all the musically more mature.
In the process of forging all these familiar elements together the music sounds even more based on the genre’s 90’s aesthetics. Heavily leaning towards a blend of classic Norwegian Black Metal song structures and the harshness of French Black Metal of that same 90’s-era. This way it sounds quite a bit similar to what Drowning The Light is presenting us with on the last few of their releases. The similarities mainly lie within the use of powerful riffs in a modest but melancholic tone in combination with the almost whistling moody keyboards.
Whatever your personal preference is in the styles the band used, probably depending on your stance to the different variations in Black Metal, it is clear that these two guys are becoming increasingly better in crafting their art, regardless of the way they choose to channel it. If anything, ‘The Absence Of Grace’ proves that Order Of Nosferat is still on the rise and that they keep on finetuning and refining their formula.
