Nocturnis have released Der Letzte Hort, the second single from Drangsal, and the title carries the question the song is built on. It translates as the last refuge, and what the band want to know is whether such a place still offers shelter or has simply outlasted everything around it. The album comes out on 6 November through Fetzner Death Records.
The record follows witch persecution through its whole machinery: the accusation, the trial, the execution and what all of that leaves behind. Eight tracks, opening on Liturgie and closing on a title track of nine minutes, and the German band keep to the atmospheric black metal they have played since their first EP rather than dressing the history up in anything louder.
Guitarist Vincent Padrutt recorded and produced it. The band's first full-length, Unsegen, came in 2022, and this is the second, which makes the scale of the subject a deliberate step up rather than a habit.