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The Swedish outfit Nox Aurea is presenting their 2nd album - Ascending In Triumph. Doomy death metal with deep growls of Patrick Kullberg, spiced up with clean vocals by Alice Persell here and there. The beauty-and-the-beast concept isn't anything new, but Nox Aurea are heavier and don't follow the Theatre Of Tragedy path - unfortunately for the Swedish this isn't new, too. And their fellow countrymen Draconian are around a bit longer.
They kick off with the title track, an almost 8 minute long tune. In my opinion the track is a bit too long as they seem to repeat themselves... With The Loss And Endeavour Of Divinity they offer the next long track! Symphonically they open up, then take away the symphonic edge and present a doom passage. Later they speed up a bit and Alice Persell takes over the mic for a bit, but the main part of the vocals is done by Kullberg. At The Shadowless Plains they have some up-tempo parts and the speed changes make it more interesting. Their dark, almost depressive sound is cool, but the long doom passages are a bit tiring, so the opening part of Mother Aletheia Chapter II is almost 90 sec., then they add some heaviness and vocals, but without a speed change. And that's - at least for me - the main problem, there are interesting bits and pieces, but the passages are too long, it get out of hand. I miss some catchiness... some parts which are memorable. Especially the instrumental closer Emendare is a bit lengthy. They kick off slowly with keyboards and add strings which give it a symphonic edge, but again they can't keep the listeners interest til the end. They should have shortened the song to make it an instrumental outro or needed to offer a bit more. Sorry.
Well, perhaps I'm the wrong person to review this album as I'm not a huge fan of doom metal, but there have been albums I found more interesting. I just miss some catchy parts, something which sticks. I also think that they should give Alice more space to perform, it doesn't mean to copy Theatre Of Tragedy or similar acts. Anyway, I recommend to check out Nox Aurea at their MySpace page first.
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