A totally new name to me, this French hybrid crew (I think it translates roughly as See How They Fall) introduce themselves with a brooding but unspectacular four minute Prelude before they kick off properly with Wanderer Of Eternity. It’s very feisty post-hardcore stuff with a really nice loose bass sound and a very traditional kind of ‘ebb and flow’ riff style. The vocals do come across as curiously more in that black metal snarl, though which kind of shifts them closer to bands like Agruss; Neurosis or Isis with blackened death leanings. It is OK, full on stuff but at least initially lacking a little atmosphere or showing a little too much control.
Of Flames, Flesh And Sins shakes the tempo about a good bit more, dropping some deft quiet passages and more subdued rumblings with buried vocals that slowly and nicely wind back up and show how close this kind of thing is to black metal. It’s a fine piece of malevolence too. Nicely intense but still controlled vocals hurled in your face. Dense stuff.
Sweet Thoughts And Vision, the next song starts pushing the hybrid even more with a sound that actually treads on industrial death metal. I think it’s the style in the melody line wrapped around the vocal treatment, but whatever it leaves me a touch non-plussed initially though repeated listens let it grow on me a little more. As does the following instrumental and eponymous track. Everything is here on this album;, all the right ingredients; undoubted intensity, a good grasp of tempo, of dynamics if not yet quite Neurosis levels, song-writing too mostly. But the two things currently a little behind are the pull of atmosphere and a feeling that they are restraining themselves a little. A Thousand Years Of Service is a good example in that it is so close to being great (think slower Anaal Nathrakh with a great groove in the bass line) but it’s fingertips just miss the shore. Still, it is very, very listenable and much better than the majority of this kind of stuff out there.
They do leave the best to last though as The Fall does finally crash through those self-constructed barriers; a lovely twist of tempos and once again their excellent feel for rhythm pushing a migraine inducing melody first then the blast of drums and vocals totally letting rip in unstoppable fashion. For probably no reason at all I’m thinking of Gehenna’s The Killing Kind crushed in post hardcore/death metal fist and beating through walls. Proof positive that this band really does have something rather fine, loose and totally lethal behind their collective eyes.
All my reticence should be taken in context: This is a nicely short album (music like this is not suited to hour long endurance tests) with talent and muscle on show and they should storm a live set where they can totally lose it. And in the end it is just the control they exhibit on much of this album that hooks and reels it back. For me, The Fall rips free of the line and, unfettered, this lot rage.
Look them up. Take note. Good now, they should be great soon.
(6/10 Gizmo)
Leave a Reply