Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Virgin Steele
Label: SPV Records
Release: 2015
Runtime: 79:06
Rating: 2.5/5
Virgin Steele, the long-lived New York »savage – romantic« power metallers, are considered one of music’s true phenomena. From day one they’ve cultivated a style all their own, and from day one, despite the outstanding quality of this band’s body of work, they’ve stayed overlooked and ignored in the music world. Only a handful of real music enthusiasts know them.
After 2000, when the album »The House of Athreus pt. II« came out, the gaps between the band’s releases started stretching out fast. The new record is only the third one to appear since 2000. According to the band’s leader, main composer, visionary, producer, singer and multi-instrumentalist David DeFeis, the new album “Nocturnes of Hellfire & Damnation” was supposed to be a return to the band’s early days, when their third and fourth albums came out. That means the eighties, and DeFeis was thinking mainly of »Noble Savage«, which he himself calls the most important album of the band’s career, and its follow-up »Age Of Consent«.
The crew, who needed a full five years since the predecessor »The Black Light Bacchanalia« (2010) to record and release the new album, remains unchanged. DeFeis’s vocals are still the band’s main trademark. On the new album they’re used and pushed through every variety imaginable, and DeFeis often counts them as an extra instrument. The album is full of screams of every kind, from the most brutally sinister ones to angelic, crystal-clear ones that hit extreme heights, right at the limits of human ability. DeFeis remains an exceptional singer who keeps developing and growing in the power of his vocal delivery. The other factor behind the band’s unique stamp is the sound and style of Edward Pursino’s guitar. Combined with DeFeis’s vocals, it once again fits like a glove. The symbiosis between the guitar phrasing, all the connecting ornaments, the unique approach to soloing and the fat retro sound of the Gibson SG, plus DeFeis’s versatile vocal approach, stays flawless on the new album too.
The first part of the album is the one we fans of the band had quietly been hoping for. It’s unbridled, passionate, highly bombastic, predatory in that unmistakable Virgin Steele musicality, nicely varied and, as DeFeis puts it, epically romantic and gone wild! It lays out a proper exposition of Virgin Steele metal! Right up to and including the track Devilhead. All that bothers me up to this point is, once again, the thin drum production and the almost inaudible bass lines, but that’s been the Achilles’ heel of the previous three Virgin Steele releases as well.
Given that the excellent and ambitiously conceived predecessor reached dimensions of expression that lifted the band’s voice to a new, as yet unconquered level, expectations for the new album were high again. And yet.
The second part of the album gets watered down. The thrilling opening run of events is cut short already by Queen of the Dead. It’s the longest track, with a hard rock stamp, so the band is actually going back to the days of »Age of Consent« with it. The song is definitely too long, and it also sets off a series of mid-tempo to ballad-calm songs in the rest of the album (the main riff of the six-and-a-half-minute The Plague And The Fire, for example, simply doesn’t go anywhere), which bore more than they thrill. DeFeis reigns in them with his vocals and every possible variation of using them. You can’t fault the musician, he’s a great master. But this time there’s too much of him. Simply too much everywhere. His vocal ego is pushed too far into the foreground. Plainly and straightforwardly put, the second half of the album is overcomplicated. Needlessly so. The hard rock vibe of the album is reinforced by We Dissapear, then there’s the awkward and gloomy Glamour, which does bring the album back to metal territory, but it’s full of transitions between the main phrases that don’t quite fit together (read: arranged a bit clumsily), and the song once again works like a testing ground for DeFeis’s vocal characteristics. The last three songs, Delirium, Hymns to Damnation and Fallen Angels, are calm to mid-tempo, and the album completely settles down with them, with DeFeis’s vocals and the keyboard arrangements stepping to the front again. These three bring nothing new or unheard and give off a sense of »redundancy«. The album is simply way too long, by at least half an hour.
“Nocturnes of Hellfire & Damnation” isn’t a bad album, but it’s not the Virgin Steele album that should have followed the excellent predecessor »The Black Light Bacchanalia«. Especially after five years of »dithering«. It would have been enough for DeFeis and company to go about things more simply. Hard rock never really suited them, and this time there are too many ballad sections and mid-tempo tracks on the album, so the real heart of Virgin Steele metal gets lost across the record’s long running time.
Lineup
David DeFeis – vocals, keyboards
Edward Pursino – guitar
Joshua Block – bass guitar
Frank Gilchriest – drums
Production
David DeFeis
Tracklist
1. Lucifer’s Hammer
2. Queen of the Dead
3. To Darkness Eternal
4. Black Sun-Black Mass
5. Persephone
6. Devilhead
7. Demolition Queen
8. The Plague and the Fire
9. We Disappear
10. A Damned Apparition
11. Glamour
12. Delirium
13. Hymns To Damnation
14. Fallen Angels
