Bandcamp Twenty years into their existence, the French outfit Angellore make doom the way a film score builds a world. Nocturnes, their fourth album, is a wide, cinematic, deeply melancholy record that drifts between atmospheric death-doom, neofolk hush and orchestral grandeur, the kind of thing that wants the lights low and the volume high. Mixed by the prolific Belgian producer Déhà, it trades on contrast: ethereal clean vocals floating over deep growls, near-silent acoustic passages giving way to vast eruptions.
The album is at its considerable best when the production lets that contrast breathe. “A Dormant Stream” is the standout, an enormous spatial build that stays remarkably clean even at full density, the master holding enough headroom for real dynamic leaps, the bass actually growling with definition while the clean vocals soar and the growls sit clear in the middle. “Falling Birds” opens the record with the same immersive melancholy, uncrushed and patient, and “Forsaken Fairytale” pulls off the widest swing of all, from plastic, intimate acoustic guitar into orchestral black-doom bursts without the limiter ever flattening the emotional payoff. When Angellore commit to space, the results are genuinely gorgeous.
Where Nocturnes slips is in its denser middle. “Black Sun River” leans into a more modern gothic-symphonic wall and pays for it, the drums turning sterile and sampled, the mix over-compressed until the band feel sealed behind glass, and “Martyrium” overloads its mids in the heavy passages until the instruments start masking each other. A recurring low-mid stacking softens the rhythm section’s transients whenever the orchestration piles up at a climax, the one technical habit that keeps the record’s biggest moments from hitting as cleanly as its quietest ones.
None of that undoes the achievement. Nocturnes is an ambitious, emotionally rich gothic death-doom record from a band that has clearly earned its patience, and at its peaks it conjures the wide, grieving, cinematic atmosphere it is reaching for completely. A firmer hand on the low end in the densest climaxes would have made it a classic of its kind; as it stands, it is a beautiful, frequently moving record well worth getting lost in after dark.
Cinematic, melancholy gothic death-doom that moves between atmospheric heaviness, neofolk acoustic hush and orchestral grandeur, with ethereal clean vocals (male and female) set against deep growls. The strongest tracks (“A Dormant Stream”, “Falling Birds”, “Forsaken Fairytale”) keep their macro-dynamics genuinely intact, the master left uncrushed so the swings from near-silence to vast eruption land with full emotional weight, “A Dormant Stream” especially staying clean and defined even at full density. The weaknesses are in the denser middle: “Black Sun River” leans gothic-symphonic and turns over-compressed with sterile sampled drums, “Martyrium” overloads its mids, and a recurring low-mid frequency stack softens the rhythm-section transients whenever the orchestration piles up at a climax. Ambitious, atmospheric and frequently gorgeous.
Standout tracks: A Dormant Stream, Falling Birds, Forsaken Fairytale
