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This kicks hard. Nocturnal Sorcery play second-wave black metal, the cold and raw kind. The screams are ear-piercing and completely insane at times and are a highlight as they really augment the aggressiveness of the music. At times I'm reminded a little bit of the likes of Marduk, but more on the slower parts. The guitars are incisive, the sound coming out of them is out of this world, whereas the drums are often almost buried and struggle to be noticed. Mind you, this may well be what the band wanted as this is not the polished kind at all. Raw, barbaric, chaotic, a little messy even. There are some more headbangable parts that immediately brought Carpathian Forest to mind, though there aren't that many of those. "Spectral Force," "Joyless Dance in the Shadow" and closer "Along the Path of Fire" are not songs per se, but rather noisy, nightmarish and demonic-sounding interludes, all used to very good effect. The album is a tiny bit on the long side for the genre, but there's nothing here I'd consider skippable. A nice little aural nightmare.