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Behold Almighty Doctrine is the third full-length album by US technical death metal act Lecherous Nocturne. Released in 2013 it’s been quite some time since the band last put out any kind of release, their most prior effort being the 2008 album The Age of Miracles Has Passed. The group’s line-up has seen some significant change in that time, with guitarist Chris Lollis moving to lead vocal duties and almost the entire line-up being reworked between the albums, with the lone exception of guitarist Kreishloff performing the same role between the two releases.
The music on Behold Almighty Doctrine is fairly typical sounding technical death metal, albeit of the more restrained non-showy kind. While the technical chops of the instrumentalists are in evidence, it’s pretty clear right from the off that Lecherous Nocturne have a focus on creating an intense death metal sound first and foremost, with Lollis providing a direct and ‘in your face’ style of growling vocals. This is a trait which is carried over into the music itself, with the band favouring a very much to the point style of song writing, resulting in track times that never hit even a four minute mark and many of which don’t even hit three. This method of writing provides the listener with little surprise as the release hurtles onwards, and it’s over before even a full half hour has passed.
But is it a case of quality over quantity though? To be honest with you I’m not convinced. Lecherous Nocturne sound competent right from the word go and with the apparent goal of the album being to pummel the listener with their barrage of sound then Behold Almighty Doctrine is an undeniable success. But at the end of the day the album doesn’t stick with me the way the best of the best out of the technical death metal genre do. The songs sound stylistically similar, with little to no defining features to tell them apart from each other. A couple, such as Lesions from Vicious Plague and Caustic Vertigo stand out as being the best of the bunch while listening to the album but even they ultimately aren’t memorable. You know there are problems with a release of this kind when an interlude track, in this case Prelude No. 2, sticks with you more than the music that the artist actually plays.
Behold Almighty Doctrine is good, competent, well-played technical death metal but ultimately one that dropped the ball. While the most show-off of technical death metal bands have never particular done much for me I can’t say that Behold Almighty Doctrine, which is pretty much the opposite does much for me either. I like a technical death metal band to have balance between brutality and technical ability and while this album certainly has its brutal moments and its technical ability, it lacked substance. Not bad by any means and the songs did show a marked improvement during the second half of the release, but all I can reasonable award it is an above average rating.
58/100
(Originally written for Heavy Metal Haven (http://metaltube.freeforums.org/lecherous-nocturne-behold-almighty-doctrine-t2838.html))