Usually, if I see something that claims it is:

“Ambient/Industrial Cosmic Black Metal.”

Then I’m out. Gone. Running in the opposite direction, screaming like the Final Girl in a horror movie, tripping over my own feet while the masked killer of pretension looms ever closer.

I mean, come on — those are a combination of words that instantly fill me with dread. Not the good kind of dread you want from Black Metal either, but the kind that makes you want to punch your laptop screen and start a bonfire out of cassette tapes labelled “soundscape explorations.” I

t sounds like the sort of thing that should come with a 3,000-word essay about the existential geometry of despair and some bloke in a black turtleneck telling you you’re not supposed to “get it.”

So yeah, normally I’d avoid it like the plague.

But apparently, this week I decided to make an arse of myself and actually listen to something calling itself “Ambient/Industrial Cosmic Black Metal.” That something is the Decay EP by Numen Noctis, and let me tell you — this record absolutely fucking floored me.

This is Black Metal, yes, but not the kind that skulks through forests in the dead of night. This is the sound of space collapsing in on itself, the hiss of radiation from dying stars, the hum of ancient machines orbiting long-dead planets. It’s vast, terrifying, and beautiful all at once.

The first thing that struck me about Decay is just how huge it sounds. The production isn’t slick — it’s sharp, icy, and alien. The guitars shimmer and crackle like cosmic static, building these immense walls of sound that feel infinite. Every riff expands outward, like it’s trying to touch the edge of the universe. The drumming feels less like percussion and more like the pulse of something ancient and alive, buried deep beneath layers of interstellar dust.

And the vocals — holy hell, the vocals. They’re not just screamed or growled, they’re echoed across time and space, reverberating like the dying cry of a god that no one worships anymore. There’s a sense of scale to them, a kind of dreadful majesty that fits the whole cosmic theme perfectly

.But what really got me — and this is where I have to eat my own words — is how well the ambient and industrial elements fit into the overall sound. They’re not tacked on, not some art-school experiment slapped over a few tremolo riffs. They’re part of the DNA of this thing. The ambient parts don’t slow it down — they expand it. The industrial textures don’t make it cold — they make it inhuman. It’s not trying to sound like a band playing songs; it’s trying to sound like a collapsing galaxy screaming in slow motion.

And the scary part? It succeeds.

Decay is one of those rare releases that makes you rethink what Black Metal can be. It doesn’t reject the roots — there are still blast beats, still moments of pure frozen fury — but it pushes those roots into the void and watches them mutate. It’s experimental, yes, but never self-indulgent. It’s visionary, but never smug about it.

By the time the final track ends, you don’t feel like you’ve finished listening to an EP. You feel like you’ve been spat out of a black hole, half-dead and wondering what the fuck just happened.

So here I am, eating my own words and admitting that sometimes, those pretentious-sounding tags are hiding absolute gold.

Decay EP is available now on the Numen Noctis Bandcamp page.

CHOICE CUT: Decay

BLACK METAL ARCHIVES VERDICT: Decay is what happens when you give the cosmos a guitar and tell it to scream. Cold, cosmic, and completely captivating — Numen Noctis just proved that even space can burn.