https://www.facebook.com/nocturnalceremony
Sounds like: Death Metal
From: Norway
Pre-save here (single set to be released on March 4)
1. How did you get started with music and how did you develop your sound?
Well, it is a long story - so brace yourself. Our 2 guitarists started up this band back in 1991 as 15-year olds who sat pretty much every free hour in the day learning all the Metallica and Slayer riffs ever recorded before reaching out to find a drummer, a bassist and vocalist - which we found in the same area we lived in and had gone to middle-school together with. Naturally, as the taste in music develops our preferences went more towards harder music and pretty soon we were more into Morbid Angel, Carcass, Deicide, Entombed, Dismember and many other classic 1990s death metal bands. We were active in the same era as the other infamous Norwegians like Mayhem, Immortal, Dark Throne, Satyricon and the likes, but were in different circles and a different part of the scene and never really got into the whole black metal thing with the church-burnings and bullshit - we were called in and interrogated by the police, though! In 1994 we won a local talent-competition and won enough prize-money to get into a at the time "proper studio" to record a demo-tape which sounded pretty shit, not gonna lie, but we were happy with just having something recorded on tape - with 5 tracks which was spread around in the underground-scene and one of them actually made it on to a compilation CD consisting of bands from our home town. After playing together as a band for about 4 years, the time for mandatory military service came up for a couple of us as we turned 19 and sadly, that was the end for the band for the time being. Some of us went to start other bands or doing music in other genres and we basically just kept sporadic contact as old friends until one day back in 2022 our 2 guitarists went out to get a coffee and to reminisce about the old days and chat about guitars and whatnot and one thing led to another and here we are with 3 out of 4 original members releasing a brand new album- just about 30 years after we called it quits. Our guitarist, co-vocalist and producer Thomas has for 2 decades worked as a DJ and producer within the EDM-world, so this is how our newer studio-sound has come to be. If you can make punchy EDM-tracks, the road to making punchy metal-tracks is not that far and long in the world of studio-production - the basic science of sound applies to both or all music-genres.
2. What do you want people to take away from your music?
What you take away from music is highly subjective and individual, but we hope that people will love the big "wall of sound" that many of our tracks has, maybe make some stank-faces on the big drops and for those brave enough to deep-dive into the lyrics, it is how we write it in our biography on socials: Sharing our music is a way of alleviation, up to the point of being cathartic. It is a way to express emotions that simply don't have any words, or a name. Releasing these songs is an act of letting go of some demons. It is about accepting what life now is and who you have become, to perhaps ultimately find some small measure of peace. Maybe by listening, you can too. We are Nocturnal Ceremony - welcome to our darkness.
3. How would you describe your sound to the average listener?
We try to stand out a bit from the "norm" and try to create a rather unique sound with riff-based death metal with its roots back to the 1990s death metal, but with a big modern sound and production fused with influences from other genres such as black metal and deathcore.
4. Who are three bands you’d like to tour with?
Would have to look to our neighbors to the east, to Sweden. "Orbit Culture" and "Humanity's Last Breath"..and let's throw in Morbid Angel for good measure, would love to hang out and chat death metal with Trey.
5. What's your thoughts on AI generated music?
To each their own, but as artists who works pretty hard for the amount of streams and exposure we get - it's rather annoying to see prompt-generated tracks get streamed in the hundreds of thousands or millions. Low effort, and a shameful marketing scheme from many of the platforms who generates their own AI tracks, get paying people to listen, but don't have to pay out any form of revenue. We hope that some day soon there will be an end to the option to upload whatever you want, when it is just slop of already existing music made by actual musicians.
6. What’s your take on the current state of Death Metal?
It seems to be on a bit of a rise! For the past few years there has been a lot of new bands emerging and also some of the older ones re-surfacing. There are some bands keeping the original sound and some which are embracing more modern production, which is a great thing!
7. What’s the current local music scene like there in Norway?
It's actually not too bad. We have quite a few festivals dedicated to harder metal-music, like f. ex "Tons of Rock" (Oslo), "Beyond the Gates" (Bergen), "Karmøygeddon" (Kopervik) and "Inferno" (Oslo, which we would very much like to play one day!)
8. What’s your take on the royalties that streaming services pay out to artists?
Unless your name is Taylor Swift or Justin Bieber - it's pretty much non-existent. Smaller artists with a few thousand listeners like ourselves will never see much income from it - but we view it more as a tool for reaching people that will enjoy our stuff. If we were in this for the money, we would definitely have chosen a different genre.
9. What’s next for Nocturnal Ceremony?
Right now, we have 5 singles out and are eagerly awaiting the release of our forthcoming debut album "Obsidian" due on March 4th 2026 on all platforms. Up till recently we've mostly been a studio-band, but now we have a permanent drummer in place and have started rehearsing and trying out how we would incorporate into a live-setting all the orchestral-stuff, effects and whatnot that we have on the recordings to potentially make a live performance as close to the studio-recording as possible. It's going to take a while before we are ready to do gigs, but ultimately that is the plan. We're constantly writing, so we already have quite a bit of material ready for a second album and we are an independent band for now, not restricted or pressured by any label - so, maybe in a years time there will be another album, independent or on a label- who knows ?
10. Any shoutouts?
A huge shoutout to content-creator Tommy Wolff from "the_wolf_and_the_melody" who has been a big supporter from our very start and has really helped us shotgun the first few singles we released into the world of social media. Also, a big thanks to all the people that has taken time to check out our stuff and even sent us a personal message saying how much they like a track or that it has meant something to them. That really does matter a lot.
