Written By Kevin McSweeney
Blackened heavy metal quartet Nite have returned with their third full-length album, Cult of the Serpent Sun via Season of Mist. It sees the sinister-sounding San Franciscans continuing with the distinct sound developed on their previous albums, Darkness Silence Mirror Frame (2020) and Voices of the Kronian Moon (2022), but with bigger riffs and better hooks. Their take on their chosen genre is to lean heavily towards traditional metal, eschewing the characteristics usually associated with black metal, such as blast beats, rapid tremolo picking and shrieking vocals, in favour of classic riffs, ostentatious guitar solos and tempos rarely exceeding 200 beats per minute. The blackened element comes largely from the macabre timbre of vocalist Van Labrakis, which enables them to combine the eerie atmospherics of black metal with the fist-pumping anthemic quality of 1980s metal at its most infectious, as if Dee Snider, in his Twisted Sister pomp, had swapped his blusher and blue eyeshadow for corpse paint.
The album kicks off in anthemic fashion with the fist-pumping title track. The “death eternal” chant is certainly one that would suit the live setting particularly well. Hot on its heels is Skull, which starts with Scott Hoffman’s guitar emulating a racing car going through its gears, much like Mötley Crüe’s Kickstart my Heart, before speeding into an old-school blaster, sounding like an exhilarating blend of the aforementioned hair metal classic and Iron Maiden’s Two Minutes to Midnight.
Crow (Fear the Night) sounds like it should be on the soundtrack of an 80s slasher movie, and not just because of the title. It gave me flashbacks not just to the finer aspects of late 20th century horror, but to the poetry of Ted Hughes that I studied in school. It also brought to mind another horror in the form of a painful reminder of the pandemic, with the crow mask in the accompanying video making the wearer resemble a 17th-Century plague doctor.
The Mystic heralds its arrival with ominous, Middle Eastern-sounding melodies before settling into a slow 6/8 groove. Sombre and elegiac, it is reminiscent of Iron Maiden’s Afraid to Shoot Strangers, or the opening few minutes of it at least. Whereas the intro to The Last Blade briefly invokes Paint it Black by the Rolling Stones before tearing into a 12/8 time blaster that verges at times on Helloween-style early power metal.
Carry On is not, to my immense disappointment, the soundtrack to a highly camp and innuendo-laden British film starring Charles Hawtrey as a demonic cult leader. (I’d have queued round the block to see that movie!) Instead, it opens with a riff that seems like a spooky twist on Don Henley’s Boys of Summer – a summer that is sunny in a serpentine kind of way, if you will – before settling into a goth-tinged moderately fast rocker that would not have been out of place on Paradise Lost’s Icon or Draconian Times.
Tarmut has strong Jeff Wayne vibes. Slow and ominous, it could easily be combined with a sombre narration by Richard Burton, warning of terrible events to befall mankind. One could almost imagine the red creeper slowly wrapping itself around all manner of human infrastructure during the drawn-out Parisienne Walkways-style solos.
Proceedings are brought to a close by Winds of Sokar, which commences with a flurry of Maiden-style harmonised leads, which give way to what, musically at least, could almost be the NWOBHM stalwarts putting their own spin on a version of The Unforgiven by Metallica. The twin lead guitars feature prominently later in the song, seeing it through to an all-too-abrupt end. Music that is epic in tone and stately in execution can sometimes have a tendency to persist well beyond the point when interest starts to wane, but that is not the case here. Consisting of just eight songs and clocking in at just shy of 37 minutes, it’s a fairly slender volume – certainly more so than their debut album – that leaves the listener wanting more.
The more hypercritical among you might cite the lack of variety in the vocal performance as an issue, with accusations of monotony in terms of the vocal delivery ensuing. I wouldn’t subscribe to this view. Labrakis might not be the most mercurial or multifaceted vocalist out there, but not everyone can be Devin Townsend. As I mentioned earlier, his performance is ultimately what blackens the heavy metal in the case of this band, and as such, suits the music perfectly well. My esteemed colleague Caine Blackthorn goes into greater detail:
Van Labrakis of Nite commands the band with a vocal presence that feels like it was summoned from the depths of a moonlit abyss. His voice is a spectral force, blending blackened, demonic gutturals with an eerie, otherworldly resonance. Much like a phantom storyteller weaving tales of cosmic doom and nocturnal sorcery. Each syllable drips with an arcane energy, evoking the haunting chill of classic heavy metal while channeling the raw fury of blackened screams. Whether howling through the darkness or growling with primal intensity, Labrakis doesn’t just sing, he conjures.
So there. His vocal performance isn’t monotonous; it’s moonlit and abyssal. Overall, it’s a highly enjoyable album, with more than enough about it to appeal to fans of both the classic and the corpse-like. I wish there had been slightly more of it, but I happily award them four Devil horns out of five.
Cult of The Serpent Sun is out now on Season of Mist Records
Tracklist
1. Cult of the Serpent Sun [LISTEN]
2. Skull
3. Crow (Fear The Night) [WATCH]
4. The Mystic [LISTEN]
5. The Last Blade
6. Carry On
7. Tarmut
8. Winds of Sokar
