Label: Via Nocturna
Date: April 30th, 2025
Funny thing about geography is that after reviewing a bunch of releases from Galicia, I’m moving away to Galicia. You can look it up. There are two Galicias in Europe. One is the most western piece of land you can find on the old continent. The other is on the fairly opposite side.
To continue playing with words, Nasciturus was born (search for the meaning of the word) in southeastern Poland and “Fabulae” is the first full length release from the trio. It could also be construed as their first release altogether, since the previous output was the four-way split released a couple of years ago, which contained two tracks that found their way on “Fabulae” as well.
Generic info aside, these Poles have gathered around the campfire to tell the tales of olden days in their native province. “Fabulae” is loaded with them, giving Nasciturus a definite pagan undertone. Now, don’t ask me to further clarifto further clarify the matters, since I’m far from familiar with the language and I could only find very scarce information online. The same “informant” states that the lyrics are marvelously composed, which is all I can say about it.
However, there’s much to discuss when it comes to music. First of all, why is there so much bass in the mix? And that’s coming from a bass player! But that’s me skipping to the technical detailing. I’m doing so pretty much because I’m absolutely baffled by trying to explain what Nasciturus sounds like. Momentarily they sound like a black metal band from the finest age of Polish scene (think Inferno at the truest black metal they’ve ever been). At another moment, they sound sludgy, meandering. Then there’s the Czech influence of black metal, ala Master’s Hammer. But there’s also a number of shredding (and otherwise) guitar solos which clearly stem from the golden era of heavy metal. A whole lot of atmospheric passages, swerving melodies, original doom metal, soothing acoustics, epic emotions…
I’ve used this disorder of musical attributes to demonstrate the scattered nature of this record. “Fabulae” necessitates time to take it all in. All of the above are but a surface view of what the band conveys. You could argue that Nasciturus is a pagan black metal band and leave it at that. Still, I believe that the answer to the question of the band’s actual identity lays much deeper. What’s more, I don’t think the band themselves have set it firmly yet. Whatever you dub the genre they perform, in reality the trio is experimenting with boundaries. At this point, from the first album’s perspective, Nasciturus seems to lack compositional focus and clear direction.
There are more questions than answers after careful dissection of “Fabulae”. Yet, there’s at least one clear answer. Nasciturus has an idea. They’ve taken on a task of presenting a sort of black metal which combines Primordial, Inferno, Master’s Hammer; epic pagan atmosphere and gloomy emotions of old; bass laden doom with combination of cold second wave and rampant first wave black metal…
Nasciturus has work to do and if done properly it could even make for a next step in evolution of the genre. Eyes and ears towards them.
