#Candelabrum 🇵🇹 Nocturnal Trance

Band: Candelabrum
Title: Nocturnal Trance
Label: Hells Headbangers Records
Release Date: 29 April 2022
Country: Portugal
Format Reviewed: High-quality digital recording

Candelabrum is raw black metal, in composition and energies; and, also emotion-filled and poignant. Upon hearing the music, it hits all the spots for those who enjoy the raw, black metal production and sound. Those who admire that sound, should be pleased with how rough this album builds to and falls back to into. Yet, there are portions of such immense feeling being conveyed through guitars and drums, and vocals that carry that darkness.

Candelabrum has no listed band members, and for all accounts, seems to be only 1 person creating everything for this band. If indeed its one person, then that person has chosen obscurity because there is no mention of who it is. Some short history is active status in 2014 followed by 3 demos in 2015. First, the full-length album was 2016’s “Necrotelepathy”, next, a compilation from that same year, and the second full-length album “Portals” in 2018. In 2020 a split was produced entitled “Death Slumbers Amidst the Ruins”, to now 2022’s third album “Nocturnal Trance”.

The theme for “Nocturnal Trance” is not a new one for this band. As noted on the previous 2 albums and now on this newest one, death is the topic and the transference to a different state/plane. Death is the final breath and with that, the freedom of a spirit now untethered and traveling.

The first track, “Crystalline Telasthesia” has dissonance and heaviness to start, in guitars and speed drumming, with scratchy throated vocals, sounding phantom-like. There is a melody being built in tremolos, that is repeated for emphasis. Song takes on a different personality, a transcendence feeling, and a short interlude of otherworldly imaginings. The track goes back and forth between all out raw energies to a beautiful uplifting mood being introduced.

Next, “Through the Mirror of Divination” holds that dissonance, and melodies now come in, to play against the scratch vocal screams. Third, is “Poisonous Dark Apparitions”, nearly a droning effect in guitars and drums being produced, with intermittent savage screams being placed here and there. The track slows down to an arduous level, you feel the lethargy being created in this, the sense of death being imbibed by a dwindling spirit. Speed riffs and drums being the backdrop against the overwhelming weight of the energies.

Track four, “Beyond (Back to the Origin)”, the mood of this makes me think of traveling in a state of nothingness. Worlds going by and the spirit is just air, passing through them. Raw vocals emit emotion with the frenetic riffing and melodies overlayed on top. Mesmerizing is how this sounds to me. The duality of raw and uplifting. The palpable sadness, and then the instruments run free between all of what has been set out already.

The final track is “Into Death’s Trance”, this does seem very trance-like, in an underworld of the hell realm. Hearing an upliftment in vocals, that sits so well in this dark trance that this song creates. Again, that two-sided sense of peace in unforgiving darkness is present in this.

Yes, this ticks the boxes for the raw black metal sound and also gives the duality of peace, in dark times. Candelabrum enchants and draws you into the world of death where you question less and feel more.

I give an 8/10 Metal Marie

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8/10 To Greatness and Glory!
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