Order of Nosferat - The Absence of Grace, LP

Label: Purity Through Fire

Year of release: 2024

Vinyl colour: Black

Limitation: Undisclosed

Condition: NEW/mint

Infos/Extras: Insert. Emerging from the shadows in early 2021, the duo of Count Revenant and Anzillu released TWO full-lengths that year: Necuratul and Arrival of the Plague Bearer. And while both underground veterans are no strangers to black metal, the variety they unleashed with ORDER OF NOSFERAT was most definitely OLD, in every sense of the word: undead vampiric black metal had truly arisen! Like (vampiric) clockwork, two more full-lengths followed the next year - Nachtmusik in March and Vampiric Wrath Unleashed - proving that their bloodthirst could not be sated. While 2023 was relatively quiet, ORDER OF NOSFERAT "only" released a split album with Lunar Spells, showing a more nuanced and atmospheric side to their vampirism.

Now that nuanced / atmospheric shift fully blooms with The Absence of Grace, ORDER OF NOSFERAT's fifth full-length. Utilizing a unique production style - crisp and cutting but somehow brittle, exceptionally ethereal in its effect - the duo here move a more measured pace, patiently doling out their emotive marches with both misery and mania, somehow sounding dead and incensed simultaneously. Whilst moving within the vampiric black metal idiom, it's an unapologetically sorrowful canvas on which they paint - "bloody tears" staining everything, to invoke Castlevania - poignantly illustrating the titular The Absence of Grace. ORDER OF NOSFERAT's characteristic moonlit synths brilliantly shine here, moving to the fore and melding seamlessly with their cresting & cathartic riffing. All the sadness and nostalgia that the duo have created so prolifically the past four years comes to a climax with The Absence of Grace! Where that cursed coffin ship sails next, only ORDER OF NOSFERAT know...