AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: LECHEROUS NOCTURNE — “SERPENTENCE”

(written by Islander)

Lecherous Nocturne aren’t in a race to amass a mountainous discography. Although this South Carolina band first came together in the late ’90s they’ve released only four albums, after some early demos and an EP. The last three were spaced five years apart. With five years having elapsed since the last of those (2018’s Occultaclysmic, enthusiastically reviewed at length here), it might be time for something new — and something new is indeed on the way.

We’ve learned that Lecherous Nocturne are at work on a new full-length assault of ferocity entitled Violust, and what we’ve got for you today is a playthrough video by the band’s bassist James O’Neal of one of the new songs, a blazing breath-taker named “Serpentence“.

The idea of a new album from this band is an exciting one around here. We’ve been ardent fans for a long time, witness the 9 times we’ve written about them beginning in 2012, including our man Andy‘s Synn Report in 2014, in which he reviewed all of their first three albums. He summed them up as “three albums of stunningly technical riffage and sheer metallic mayhem, devastating drum work and bleeding-edge bedlam. Utterly merciless and unforgiving.”

All those words apply with equal force to the song you’re about to hear. If anything they may understate the impact of “Serpentence“.

We should first congratulate the band for presenting the song with a bass playthrough. As we all know, bassists tend to be unheralded, and their contributions often neglected among listeners and writers. And so it’s a treat to see James O’Neal in action, to see both his incredibly nimble dexterity and his light touch, both hands like spiders spinning elaborate webs.

And it’s a good thing we get to see this, because it would be harder to focus if we were just listening — because of the absolute hellstorm that’s happening around O’Neal‘s performance.

The vocals are explosive and frighteningly furious, a channel of monstrous malice. Leaning into their black metal influences, the guitarists generate superheated onslaughts of boiling and brazen violence, fleet-fingered as ever and entirely devoted to burning everything in front of them to ash — and exulting in the carnage. The drumming channels equal fury, maniacal but also surgically precise.

The adrenaline-fueled riffing furiously roils and writhes, delirious in its diabolical savagery, and the music also flares in bursts of imperiously screaming intensity, like fanfares of demon glory. (No doubt, if we could see how all this was done, visions of spiders would appear again — extremely venomous ones).

There’s only one part of the song where the hellstorm briefly abates, long enough for the music to lurch and groan, to become dark and oppressive — and barely long enough for a listener to catch their breath before the band start eviscerating the senses again, but this time carrying forward the dread and bleakness of that interlude even as the fretwork furiously flies again, which becomes a prelude to a final volcanic upheaval of utter derangement and devastation.

If the band’s mission with this song were to suck the wind from a listener’s lungs, to drop jaws, pop eyes, and spin minds like brains in a whipping centrifuge, well, they sure as hell succeeded.

LECHEROUS NOCTURNE is:
Zach Jeter – Vocals (Nile/Olkoth)
Kreishloff Lofgren – Guitar
James O’Neal – Bass (ex-Atrocious Abnormality)
Ethan Lane – Guitar
Alex Lancia – Drums (Olkoth)

Follow Lecherous Nocturne at the locations linked below for more developments leading toward the album in the coming months:

https://linktr.ee/lecherousnocturne
https://www.instagram.com/lecherousnocturne/
https://www.facebook.com/lecherousnocturne
https://lecherousnocturne.bandcamp.com/