Year of release: 2018
Label: Season of Mist
Rating: 6,5 / 10
Season of Mist, having turned from a good large underground label into a major business player, expectedly stand on a road paved with pink brick. When I returned to label's promo network, I was surprised how little is the quantity of their latest extreme metal releases. Plus this scandal around INQUISITION, during which the label didn't said a single word in support of the band. However, if you remember from what shit SoM began its work, once again you will understand - the history develops in a spiral. Of course, the French giant has signed a number of powerful and malicious bands, but now they seem to have confused SoM with Nuclear Blast because they sound equally sleek. New CRAFT almost certainly will be SATYRICON for the poor, DESTROYER 666 lost their proprietary untidiness, DRUDKH stopped changing their sound at all. And now NOCTURNAL GRAVES are also affected.
Promo tracks that appeared in the Internet before the release were really slow and dull. You don't expect something like this from people from COFFIN LUST (!), DENOUNCEMENT PYRE (!!), IMPIOUS BAPTISM (!!!). Fortunately, the final result turned out to be more or less edible in terms of dynamics. The thrashy fervor is still in place, and the heavy tracks are well woven into the general canvas without causing much irritation. Nevertheless, "Titan" is losing out even to the sly "Satan's Cross", not to mention the murderous "... from the Bloodline of Cain". If you think that things like "Souls Tribulation" are cool for headbanging, take any song from the previous full-length and understand how much you are mistaken. Where is all the devilry, where is the murder and the goat-horned demons dancing on the ruins of the churches? Perhaps the concept of the album is based on something else - I do not know, in my promo version there are no texts. And yet I can say that "Titan" sounds too deliberate and safe. After that, the paragraph from the press release where NOCTURNAL GRAVES called musicians who sold the soul to the devil for the sake of "true old school spirit" sound mocking. Maybe they did, but then they met Michael from SoM and sold him this spirit. It is regrettable to say that, but "Titan" is completely unconvincing and toothless album.
English (UK) 
Крыўская