This is the last truly underground release of Ukraine’s own black metal superstars Nokturnal Mortum. It is less sophisticated than "Goat Horns", but should still hold the interest of those who found "Goat Horns" worthwhile. Nokturnal Mortum play melodic black metal drenched in synths, with obvious respect to older metal in the guitar riffs (and so it comes as no surprise that they cover "Sorrows of the Moon" on this album). This isn’t my style of metal and aesthetically it is almost disturbingly similar to "the new-wave of Norwegian black metal" a.k.a. "oppressed-schoolkids-pretending-to-be-evil-while-playing- pop-music-with-distortion". Yet, there are things I find worthwhile in this band. They are inspired and express their pagan ideology through this music without resorting to anything blatantly obvious, corrupted or false, even if they have a tendency to choose the easy way.

"Lunar Poetry" is a romantic, nocturnal synthesis of rock, metal, classical and folk music. The instruments are balanced in the production, with a slight emphasis on synths and drums. Vocals echo behind a slight distance that adds an amount of authority and power to the pagan battle-screams. There is something juvenile and defective in each of the songs, but most of them are carried out well enough to maintain integrity and give this band a position above most competitors in it’s genre. And I am actually glad that the occasional failing can here be attributed to lack of experience, as that is remediable, whereas taint of commerciality rarely is. Nokturnal Mortum are honest and that is a trait that I appreciate. My favorite tracks on this album like "Lunar Poetry", "Perun’s Celestial Silver" and "Ancient Nation", manage to convey the epic longing for freedom, darkness, power and the heroic times, that is the essence of, not only black metal music, also it’s characteristic ideology, thought patterns and psychological profile.

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