NOX DRACONIS ARGENTI

"Nox Draconis Argenti" is the debut release by Belgian, Zwijndrecht, Antwerp based extreme metal act Axamenta (if you don´t count the two demos "Echoes (1995)" and "Into a Dream (1997)" which preceded it). "Nox Draconis Argenti" is an EP and the playing time is 28:01 minutes so in terms of quantity it´s well worth the money. The EP was independently released in November 1999.

The music on the album is symphonic and melodic black metal with lots of orchestral keyboard arrangements. Listening to the bombastic and symphonic classical intro "The Revenant's Dirge" almost led me to believe that this was a side project by the guys in Rhapsody of Fire. Throughout the album the keyboards are very dominant in the soundscape. The vocals are predominantly raspy black metal type singing but there are some clean female singing too. Now I mentioned that the music on "Nox Draconis Argenti" is black metal but the keyboards have a tendency to give the music a vanilla power metal touch that unfortunately ends up draining the music of energy and edge. And believe me it´s not like there´s much energy there to drain in the first place. The music is very generic to begin with. Nothing here haven´t been tried at least a hundred times with more success by artists like Dimmu Borgir or Old Man´s Child.

The musicianship aren´t too impressive either but the the most serious issue with "Nox Draconis Argenti" is the lack of power and memorable hooks in the music. The sound production is also below standard and "Nox Draconis Argenti" most of all sounds like a demo recording. The keyboards are too high in the mix and the raspy vocals are too low. The guitars sound thin and weak and the drums sound muddy. Upon conclusion this is not a good start for Axamenta and a 1 star (20%) rating is warranted for this generally poor quality release. Fortunately for Axamenta there were better things to come on future releases.