Nyctophobia
Arid

"Arid." Full-Length released in 2009 by Nyctophobia. Total duration: 46:30.

Completely instrumental album. With the total absence of vocals, this album, more repetitive and obsessive than ever, with rather long tracks (50 minutes for 3 songs), less slow than the others but equally dark and oppressive, seems to have little of Funeral and is instead more influenced by Drone. Except for "Thrist", the first track.

"Thrist", the only track of "Arid" that can truly be called Funeral Doom, (even if contaminated by Dark Ambient), with a notable duration of 18 minutes and 6 seconds, starts with the usual slow rhythm, broken only by some scattered piano notes. Funeral music, only the drums seem to still have a breath of life in them. Not much to say, as the track is almost always the same, and only around 13 minutes is there a change: the guitar falls silent, only to resume at 16 minutes; there's an interesting interlude where a few piano notes come forward, while the drums keep time slowly, and the bass, inaudible for the rest of the song, plucks its strings, only to be covered again by the guitar's sound until the end of the track.

"Under the Midday Sun" immediately starts with a rhythm that seems to come from afar, followed by "unpleasant" sounds typical of Drone, which scratch the eardrum forcefully: these noises come and go, seem like annoying gusts of wind; the guitar does its dirty work, and dirty is precisely the right term: in fact, it blends with the screeching background sounds creating a perfect distortion alchemy. After 4 minutes of repetition, it slows down further and lowers in tone, and apart from a few sporadic drum hits, all that can be heard is pure noise, albeit calm. Around 14 minutes, the distorted refrain starts again, and finally, it heads towards closure: the instruments and background noises fall silent, allowing a sort of ambient to conclude the track.

"Exausthion" starts, which seems a fusion of the previous ones, even though one can notice a strange Celtic Frost style touch that I must say I liked. The Drone effect is reduced to a bare minimum, of Funeral, apart from the length if you like, (10:16 minutes) there is absolutely nothing, I would therefore define it as a Dark Ambient track, corrupted by this extreme repetition, considering that the "song" is nothing but the constant repetition of a refrain, where the drums give two hits to the bass drum and one to the cymbal, the guitar roars, and the bass seems absent, all from start to finish.

I certainly can’t call "Arid" a beautiful album by classic standards, even within Funeral Doom, Drone, and Dark Ambient it is nothing exceptional, but I must say that I am very satisfied with it. I wouldn’t place it among my favorite albums, but it is truly interesting.

It is certainly not advisable for those who do not appreciate the genre, and perhaps even within the genre, some would struggle to understand it for what it is. It must definitely be listened to multiple times; for me, it remains a 4-star album.