The Key

In the pantheon of great death metal bands, Nocturnus kind of get skipped over compared to the Morbid Angels and Deicides of the world. I suppose it's no doubt due to an infamously unstable line-up, the band even performing and making an album without mainman Mike Browning. The silliness regarding the line-up still continues to this day, with two rival Nocturnii touring the world. They're also a band who really only released one classic album, but what an album it is. The Key is a masterful debut that easily stands alongside Altars Of Madness, and should be in any death metal listeners' collection. Mike Browning, aside from sporting a righteous hairsprayed 'do back in the day, was also the drummer/vocalist for a little band you may have heard of called Morbid Angel. Fortunately for us, he was ousted from the band before they ever got around to releasing a proper album (although he is on 1986's Abominations Of Desolation) meaning his own individual talent was able to shine through in his own project. Although there was never a Metallica/Megadeth-style situation between the two bands, as far as I know, it certainly feels like Browning really tried to make his own Altars Of Madness here. The music of Nocturnus is certainly very close to that of Browning's former band, though it's a touch more thrashy, the riffs having an even greater Slayer-ish quality than Morbid Angel. There's also a distinct difference in the soloing. Guitarist Mike Davis (who just happens to have one of the most spectacular mullets I've seen on a man) solos in a far more melodic fashion, the sort of which you'll see on most 80s metal albums, compared to the nightmarish inverted melodies Trey Azagthoth fires off. Not that Davis isn't a pretty great guitarist in his own right, his soloing being a highlight. Mike Browning's vocals are a genuinely evil (albeit enhanced with studio effects) mid-pitched rasp, and it's quite interesting to see how much David Vincent tried to copy his style on Altars Of Madness, before settling into his own deeper growl in later works. There's also one major innovation on this album that hadn't been seen in death metal before, and anyone who knows the album will wonder why it's taken me so long to mention them yet. Keyboards! Nocturnus were the first death metal band to employ a full-time keyboard player. The keyboard parts are usually simple washes, unless they're used as an atmospheric intro, as they are for many of the songs. Still, it adds a lot of atmosphere, and occasionally, as with the symphonic rushes of Andromeda Strain, or the brief flourishes on Droid Sector really make the music come into its own. The keyboards also highlight another unusual facet to the band, that being their sci-fi lyrical themes. The Key is a concept album about a time-travelling killer cyborg from the future, and if nothing else in my review has grabbed your attention then I'm sure that will. The likes of The Faceless certainly owe a lot of their lyrical themes to this album. It's still a fairly underused theme in metal, however, which makes its presence here stand out that little bit more. Despite a signing to the legendary Earache records, Nocturnus just couldn't hold it together, and follow-up release Thresholds, despite being a worthy album in its' own right, sank commercially, and from there on out it really was all over for the band. But when listening to the balls-out thrash of Andromeda Strain or bona fide death metal anthems Lake Of Fire and BC-AD, you know that Nocturnus really had the potential to disembowel the death metal scene, and deserved better than what they've become these days. The early 90s, really were a great time for extreme metal, and this is one of the best of a great bunch.