Taking their name from an H.P. Lovecraft fictional city and looking at the cover (brilliantly visualised by Seth Siron Anton) and title maybe a bit of Clive Barker too, I was intrigued to hear what this band sounded like. The French act have a couple of albums out before this one but it was the first I had ever even heard of them despite the fact they are no doubt quite popular at home and have played the likes of Hellfest and Metal Female Voices Fest. Yes that should also tell you they have a lady singer but proving she is more than just a voice in a sea of female voices Kathy Coupez is also the band’s guitarist.
I was not sure whether this was going to be an operatic vocalist or an aggressive one but as soon as opening track ‘Never Rising Sun’ kicked in it was very obviously the latter. Musically although on paper this had got my imagination juicing up all I could say on the first couple of listens was that I was not inspired by this lot at all. The obvious inspiration is the likes of Arch Enemy but fused with more of a metalcore flavour running through the chugging riffs. The songs start to sink in eventually but much of the album is pretty formulaic and not that diverse at all. Take a dash of Eths and a pinch of Aborted and you get the idea where this is coming from. If you are looking for brutality it does not hold back and gives you a run for your money, there are some proficient if not very memorable melodies running through things and as for the vocals yep Kathy can deep throat her parts out along with the best of them. This is one of those bands that if you popped it on to the unsuspecting they would be hard pushed to guess it was a lady behind the microphone. The twin guitars have some technicality about them and twist and turn quite neatly on numbers like ‘The Elder Sign’ but three tracks in I am looking desperately for more depth, atmosphere and substance.
I have probably listened to this 7-8 times now and it has started to grind me down and I am beginning to appreciate it a bit more but it has been no easy task and Cabale has only just began to fall on the right side of average. After a load of pretty formulaic tracks it is a welcome change for an instrumental track ‘Forever…’ to lighten the mood with some keyboard work and neat airy melodic flow and although expecting it to explode into the next track it does not and ‘…. Still’ carries on the harmonies and shows that the singer has a lovely clean voice too. That is just what has been missing so far and it adds much more dimensions to things. It’s back to the mix of gruff and squawking rooster vocals on ‘Unveiled’ but again Kathy stuns by unexpectedly adding more clean and lilting harmonies over the top. If every song had this sort of style employed I think I would have really enjoyed the band a hell of a lot more.
It’s not often I find myself saying “more clean singing’ or liking a few tracks on an album but really not feeling anything for the rest of it but that is exactly what has happened here. I certainly won’t dismiss this band and will be interested in seeing where they go from here and maybe even checking out what they have done before. Unfortunately despite wanting to enjoy this more and give it a higher mark I simply couldn’t.
(5.5/10 Pete Woods)
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