Review: NOCTURNAL DAMNATION – Sado Goat Ritual Desecration (2010-2017)

Year of release: 2018
Label: Pagan War Distro Rex
Rating: 7 / 10

The geography of Bagnik Zine is expanding again. The other day I received a CD from South Korea, and this, I tell you, is a big exotic. South Korean-Thai band NOCTURNAL DAMNATION has been proudly performing Bestial Sadogoat Metal since 2010. During this time, it managed to record one full-length album and a bunch of splits. Half of the releases came out on quite good underground labels like Iron Bonehead or Dunkelheit, and this indicates a certain quality of blasphemous shells supplied by the band. “Sado Goat Ritual Desecration (2010-2017)” is, as you might guess, a collection of rare recordings made in the first 7 years of NOCTURNAL DAMNATION's existence. This includes tracks from splits + 2 unreleased songs. However, as it turned out, the oldest track of the compilation dates back to the 2015th year. Older versions of some songs recorded in 2012 were not included here. Therefore, probably, it would be better to remove the dates from the release name, but it’s up to band to decide of course. The music on the disc is that Black Metal, which is commonly referred to as “war metal”, “bestial metal” and other loud notions. I must say that the group sounds competent, convinced and convincing. All songs have good sound (although it gets worse as it gets closer to the end) and carefully balanced structures. The flames of satanic violence are limited by them just enough to remain fascinating and not turn into meaningless noise. That is, the sound is made as it should: there is no lickiness in it, but it's also not extremely raw. Powerful, tough, brutal. There is, however, a small problem: all these songs were recorded by a duo in which no one knew how to play drums; the band found a live drummer only in 2018. While you have not closed this page, I will give you a hope: the drum machine sounds very solid, in some compositions you will not guess at all that these are not live instruments.

From the compositional side, this compilation can surprise only with its stability. Absolutely all songs, except the last two, can be described as “very good”. Of course, this is not BLACK WITCHERY, but NOCTURNAL DEVOTION can proudly piss on some irresponsible shit like Brazilian HAMMERGOAT or GOATPENIS with the latest album. NOCTURNAL DEVOTION does not try to stand out at all, they methodically wage their war against light of life, tearing the angels with the sounds of explosions and machine-gun bursts. Their metal is primitive and faceless, but this is its strength. Simply designed CD is released by the well-known Pagan War Distro Rex and limited to 500 copies. You can take a closer look on a video.