For the Glory of Ukraine!
Nokturnal Mortum is a Black Metal band from Ukraine and arguably one of the most well known from their country not named Drudkh. Formed in 1991 note the band became highly known for their usage of double keyboardists and establishing a very folk-symphonic driven sound.
...And unfortunately, there's another known factor.
The band from the start of their first demo all the way to Мировоззрение / Weltanschauung were known for being very Anti-Christian — and starting with Nechrist, much more controversially, anti-Semitic, and it was a very reoccurring staple in the band's music. 2009, however, seemed to slowly change this with the release of Голос сталі / The Voice of Steel when the band dropped the controversial lyrics for a more Slavic paganism and folk-lore perspective and by 2014, the band (in particular band leader Knjaz Varggoth) dropped all political ideologies completely and they've begun to distance themselves from their past.
Long story short: Ukraine black metal band who dropped very polarizing lyrics to praising Ukraine. Black Metal, am I right?
Current Band Members
- Knjaz Varggoth - vocals, guitar, keyboard, weelyre, drymba, telynka, kobza, percussion
- Bairoth - drums
- Rutnar - bass
- Jurgris - guitars, vocals
- Surm - Keyboards, ducimer, pipes
Selected Discography
- Twilightfall [Demo] (1995)note
- Lunar Poetry [Demo] (1996)note
- Goat Horns (1997)
- To the Gates of Blasphemous Fire (1998)
- Нехристь / Nechrist (1999)note
- Мировоззрение / Weltanschauung (2004/2005) note
- Голос сталі / The Voice of Steel (2009)
- Істина / Verity (2017)
The voice of tropes...
- Album Intro Track: All of their full-length releases apart from To the Gates of Blasphemous Fire and Nechrist have examples, as do several of the demos, EPs, and splits. See Leitmotif as well. A lot of their albums also have album outro tracks, including Twilightfall, Lunar Poetry (if you count "Barbarian's Dreams" as its own song), Goat Horns, Мировоззрение / Weltanschauung, and Verity.
- Audio Adaptation: "Eastern Breakdown" is an adaptation of a poem by Dmytro Savchenko.
- Black Metal: Mixed with some symphonic elements with that!
- Bilingual Bonus: They sprinkled this throughout their catalog but now fully embraced it from 2009 onwards; all of their lyrics have been in Ukrainian for their last two albums. Мировоззрение and some of their other earlier examples of this were mostly in Russian, though. (Specifically, "Слава героям" is the only song on Мировоззрение that's in Ukrainian; the others are in Russian.)
- Careful with That Axe: Knjaz can scream, and while he's gone for a more subdued scream on recent albums, he can still pull it off.
- Cover Version: They've covered "Sorrows of the Moon" by Celtic Frost, "My Journey to the Stars" by Burzum, "Turisaz" by Graveland, "Valhalla" by Bathory, "Family Vault" by Death SS, "Lira" by Ukranian rock band Komu Vnyz, and, most surprisingly, "Nights in White Satin" by The Moody Blues. We shit you not. It's a very respectful and mostly faithful cover, too - definitely not played for any sort of irony. Meanwhile, the band's compilation 22 Years Among the Sheep features three discs worth of Nokturnal Mortum covers by other artists, many with rewritten or translated lyrics in the bands' native languages. (The rewrites were necessitated because apparently even the band themselves no longer remember most of the lyrics from the albums before To the Gates of Blasphemous Fire.)
- Early-Installment Weirdness: The band's very earliest material, before they changed their name, is actually Technical Death Metal. There's still a bit of this influence left over on Twilightfall. That's not getting into their lyrical themes, though that's actually more a case of Middle Installment Weirdness - the stuff up to and including To the Gates of Blasphemous Fire doesn't seem to be overtly political, though as most of the lyrics before Gates also seem to be lost to the mists of time, it's difficult to tell apart from what can be deciphered on record.
- Epic Instrumental Opener: Even discounting their Album Intro Tracks, they've employed a lot of these. "Steel Eagle in Golden Svarga" has a particularly long one.
- Epic Rocking: They love doing this. The longest song they've done is "Steel Eagle in Golden Svarga" from The Taste of Victory at just under fifteen minutes, though it's a strange example for them as it's somewhat repetitive in places by their standards. "The Taste of Victory", "White Tower", "My Dream Islands", and the "early version" of "Valkyrie" on the Voice of Steel remaster are all not very far behind at around twelve minutes apiece. The band's average song length is probably somewhere around seven minutes long.
- Fading into the Next Song: A lot of this too, particularly starting with Weltanschauung, which is entirely gapless. The Voice of Steel and Verity have a few gaps, but not too many.
- Folk Metal: With a little taste of Black Metal
- Gratuitous German: "Weltanschauung" translates roughly as "worldview".
- Gratuitous Panning: There's one moment in "Мировоззрение" where Knjaz's vocals very quickly shift from the left channel to the right and back again.
- Heavy Mithril: Most of their songs since The Voice of Steel have fallen into this.
- I Am the Band: It's pretty clear Knjaz Varggoth is the sole driving force of Nokturnal Mortum, considering he's the only original member left.
- Insistent Terminology: The classification of Twilightfall and Lunar Poetry as demos seems to be a strange case of this. Most demo recordings are fairly short, but they're both long enough to qualify as full-length albums. (Twilightfall is nearly 51 minutes long, while even without the 11:32 bonus track "Return of the Vampire Lord" included on many re-releases, Lunar Poetry runs for 45:46.) Regardless, all official discographies list them as demos.
- Instrumental: The metal songs on Weltanschauung and Мировоззрение are connected with them, and they're far from the only examples in the band's discography. Interestingly, apart from "Endless Vast Swamps", they're actually completely different songs on the two albums, even though the metal songs are the same apart from the language they're sung in.
- Later-Installment Weirdness: People getting into the band from The Voice of Steel onwards will be surprised by the band's ahem...past lyrical themes.
- Leitmotif/Continuity Nod/Recurring Riff: The horn melody that began on Nechrist has become the intro for every album after it, being heard during a battle in "Путь бессмертных / The Path of Immortals" off of Мировоззрение / Weltanschauung, the intro off of The Voice of Steel mixed with nature ambience, "For the Undefeated" on The Spirit Never Dies, and "I'll Meet You In Ancient Darkness (Intro)" off of Verity.
- "Black Moon Overture" employs a lot of themes that later show up in the subsequent songs on Goat Horns.
- Lighter and Softer: This seems to be a trend in their music in recent years. Verity is lighter than The Voice of Steel, which is lighter than Weltanschauung. Rather unusually for a black metal band, this hasn't dampened their reception among metal listeners much.
- Longest Song Goes Last: "White Tower" closes out The Voice of Steel and barely edges out "My Dream Islands" as the longest song on the record at 11:26.
- Meaningful Name: The name "Knjaz" is a royal title for "Prince" or "Lord" in the Slavic language. So literally, Varggoth's name is Lord Varggoth. Badass.
- New Sound Album: Given the length of their career, they've had a few.
- Lunar Poetry saw them shedding their remaining death metal elements and firmly established them as a symphonic black metal band.
- Weltanschauung / Мировоззрение saw the progressive metal influence increased a lot, as demonstrated by the much longer average length and complexity of their metal songs and the addition of connecting instrumentals. (This trend actually started on The Taste of Victory EP, which contained early versions of three of the songs from Мировоззрение, but this was the first full-length album with this style.)
- Verity has more folk influence than ever before, to the point where they now qualify as more folk metal than black metal.
- Power Ballad: "Night of the Gods", despite having harsh vocals in its verses, arguably qualifies. It's actually a completely earnest love song as well, which is, to say the least, quite rare in black metal.
- Progressive Metal: Another major influence on their sound, particularly starting around Weltanschauung, though it's always been there to some extent. Perhaps surprisingly to people who haven't actually heard their music, one of their biggest musical influences is Pink Floyd, and David Gilmour is almost certainly Knjaz Varggoth's biggest influence as a guitarist; around half of his guitar solos on their last several albums could probably slot into any latter-day Pink Floyd album without feeling out of place. Knjaz is an avowed fan of several other prog groups as well. (Nokturnal Mortum is also something of an oddity among black metal bands for even featuring guitar solos in the first place; they're fairly rare in black metal in general, but they've always been plentiful throughout Nokturnal Mortum's discography.)
- Revolving Door Band: And how!
- Sdrawkcab Name: The final song on their demo Twilightfall is entitled "Tnematset Wen: Nocturnal Mortum", while the first is called "The Unnothingles from Beyond (Siseneg)".
- Siamese Twin Songs: There are several arguable cases, but "Auto-da-fé/Barbarian's Dreams" from Lunar Poetry is indexed as one track that runs for 7:52. (Their cover of "Sorrows of the Moon" also fades into it, which comes out to a continuous suite of music that runs for around 11:38.)
- Soprano and Gravel: Their primary vocal style has been screamed throughout their career, but they've mixed in clean vocals here and there throughout their career as well. "Ukraine" is their most celebrated example of this by far, though.
- Surprisingly Gentle Song: A few, such as "Where Rivers Flow Into the Seas", "Sky of Saddened Nights", their covers of "Sorrows of the Moon" and "Nights in White Satin", and pretty much any instrumental.
- Those Wacky Nazis: Not to go into too many details, but they went with this during the Nechrist to Мировоззрение / Weltanschauung era. They seemed to distance themselves with it around 2009 with the release of The Voice of Steel, whose lyrics were mostly fantasy themed, and Knjaz finally dropped politics altogether in 2014. The most we know of their political ideologies now is more about the conflict with Ukraine's independence from Russia and are now more of a "Proud of Ukraine" type of band. There remains some debate about how sincere the band is about its attempts to distance itself from the far right, but in any case, they don't seem to want the overt associations any longer.
- Title Track: Verity is their first official full-length album not to have one. (Twilightfall didn't either.)
- Uncommon Time: Befitting any self-respecting fans of progressive rock, they employ this liberally. "Eastern Breakdown" contains one segment near the end that seemingly changes meter signatures every few bars; there's another similar segment with a lot of meter signature changes in the middle of "The New Era of Swords" which, impressively, the band even manages to pull off live with few alterations. These are far from the band's only examples.
- We Used to Be Friends: The band Lucifugum ended their friendship with Nokturnal Mortum over the latter's politics. This was after they had released a split together, 1997's Path of the Wolf / Return of the Vampire Lord; moreover, Nokturnal Mortum's 1998 album To the Gates of Blasphemous Fire was dedicated to Lucifugum's sole constant member Igor Naumchuk.
