CoC : The Bloodcult - Night's Plutonian Shore : Review

The Bloodcult - _Night's Plutonian Shore_
(Unisound Records, 1997)
by: Pedro Azevedo (6 out of 10)

On one hand, _Night's Plutonian Shore_ is nothing special musically; but on the other hand, most of it has such a sombre, oppressive atmosphere that it does become a somewhat interesting album. After a rather tedious intro made of something similar to a church organ, one can hear some drum rhythms and keyboard melodies more akin to goth than anything else. The guitar sound is very low, almost nonexistent, and the vocals are deep and gloomy. Despite its start, this track already hints at the more depressive side of the album. The third track confirms it: a slow, sad song made of mostly atmospheric synths, similar vocals to those of the previous track, some unobtrusive percussion and hardly any guitars. The fourth song, on the contrary, starts with some needless atmosphere-ruining rhythms, but improves as the keyboards appear with the spoken female vocals, which in turn mix with the male vox. After a poor short keyboard instrumental comes a track that is atrociously misplaced in this album. Keyboards, guitars and percussion have very little in common with the rest of the songs, and nothing in common with the album's best sequences. Forgetting about this one, the last track is no less than eighteen minutes long, and therefore the most important song of this 45 minute long album. Showing some violin sounds in the beginning, it then becomes a surprising piece of slow doom with keyboards, still very gloomy vocals and plenty more of that sad violin sound. Later, piano and female vocals enter the composition as well. Overall, if you forget about the sixth track, this is a reasonably worthy album as far as depressive gothic atmospheres are concerned (especially the third track and some parts of the last one), although stained by several wrong choices. An album that most will probably hate and only a few will find interesting.

(article published 1/9/1998)