NOKTURNAL MORTUM - “Біль | Hurt”

“Біль | Hurt”, positioned ahead of a new full-length album in NOKTURNAL MORTUM’s discography, goes well beyond an attempt to present new material. Its six-track structure brings together compositions from different periods of the band’s career with more experimental electronic passages, placing particular emphasis on ‘Eight Days to Spring’, written in 2014. As a result, the record carries a particular weight not only as a precursor to the forthcoming album, but also as a way of looking back at the band’s musical past from where it stands today.

The three-track structure of the EP’s first half makes this approach especially clear. ‘To Those Who Went Down the Tysyna River’ serves as a cinematic introduction built around atmospheric keyboards, spoken passages, noise samples and electronic textures. ‘Eight Days to Spring’, which follows, then connects this abstract foundation to NOKTURNAL MORTUM’s core musical language. Written in the aftermath of the deaths during the 2014 Maidan protests, the song combines march-like rhythms, thick guitars, melodic keyboard lines and soaring vocals with the band’s folk and symphonic black metal heritage. Its dramatic impact comes not directly from speed, but from the ceremonial character carried by the melody and rhythmic progression. Although folk instruments are not brought prominently to the forefront, that aesthetic remains present through the melodic movement of the guitars and the breadth created by the keyboards.

‘First Steps of Freedom... The Flavor of Doom in Eight Years’, which follows, represents the more contentious side of the EP. Its minimal electronic structure and extended repetitions deliberately move away from the band’s traditional black metal formula. Yet rather than expanding the musical idea, this experimental approach creates an atmospheric interlude. The three-track construction of Side A therefore carries an interesting contrast, but the electronic compositions ultimately fall short of the dramatic intensity brought by ‘Eight Days to Spring’.

On Side B, NOKTURNAL MORTUM’s more familiar identity returns. The new studio recordings of “Weltanschauung” and “The Forgotten Ages of Victories” reframe the band’s melodic and symphonic black metal approach through a more contemporary production. What stands out here is less the introduction of new songwriting ideas than the way the older material is positioned within the band’s current sound. Thick guitars, melodic leads, the ceremonial atmosphere created by the keyboards and black metal screams form the core components of a formula the band has developed over many years. The live version of ‘Ukraine’, meanwhile, adds a different function to the record, replacing the controlled arrangements of the studio recordings with a more collective performance atmosphere shaped by the audience’s choruses.

The vocal approach also connects the band’s past with its present throughout the EP. Sharp black metal screams are used alongside clean, high-register vocals and expansive choirs. The martial character of the chorus arrangement on ‘Ukraine’ in particular highlights the side of NOKTURNAL MORTUM where folk and symphonic elements intersect with the melodic language of traditional heavy and power metal. Rather than simply expanding the band’s vocal repertoire, this variety brings together forms of expression it has employed across different periods within the same discographic framework.

“Біль | Hurt” is therefore not a cohesive record in which every track reaches the same level of aesthetic intensity. There is a clear distance between the electronic compositions and the re-recorded older material, while the amount of genuinely new material is also limited. Even so, the record offers a compact panorama of NOKTURNAL MORTUM’s relationship with folk, melodic black metal, symphonic arrangements and more experimental sounds. At its center, ‘Eight Days to Spring’ shows why the release should not be viewed merely as an archival exercise: it transforms the melodic and ceremonial language carried over from the band’s past into a heavier and more personal form of expression around a specific historical trauma. Ultimately, this transitional release ahead of the new album matters less for revealing exactly what the future holds than for showing which musical elements NOKTURNAL MORTUM continues to keep alive.

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