Long running band but first album for seven years, France’s Seth have strangely never crossed my path. I’d have remembered. Odd name that for a black metal band I thought, bearing in mind round my neck of the woods the only people bearing that name wear woolly hats, smoke pipes, have unfeasible facial hair, drink real ale and count sheep by going “Yan, tan, thetherer….”. So a bit of idle online research and… I discover it’s an even more odd name for an anti-Christian French black metal band. Go on, hunt around. Improve your knowledge.
Well, putting beer aside, this starts promisingly. A brooding bit of acoustic guitar that wouldn’t be amiss on an Ancient Vvisdom album drops into a good solid riff. OK then in one chord it starts on a guitar sound that I… Well it’s kind of complicated but in the end ‘dislike’ is good enough. It regains a bit of rumble soon enough though, and with some clean vocals too it ends up being a pretty good song. Bits of Watain, pinches of current less intense Anaal Nathrakh, bit of Seth. Not too bad. The next track Killing My Eyes comes in a bit like Gehenna around Murder; slow riffing, modern sound, good growled vocals that are still pretty understandable. Bleak atmosphere. Not bad either but not as good.
One Ear To The Earth is where it begins to go away from me, I’m afraid. To explain (and I feel Thee Ed’s laser targeted soul-obliterating ray gun trained on me as I type this): I just don’t get Watain’s music. As personalities with a super-clear vision, as artists of integrity I get them. I always read interviews because they have things to say. I just don’t get on with the music. And I have really, really tried because they are so important to the black metal canon. Seth slide away from me in exactly the same way. Whilst their sound may veer away from Watain with more acoustic work and those clean vocals and a fair bit of the French styled black metal je ne sais quoi, with its relentless modernity and harsh sheet metal guitar with discordant jarring it is very much in the same ballpark for me. So basically if you live in that ballpark, get this. I doubt it will disappoint.
There are things to recommend here. The vocals are actually truly excellent, for one. They vary as musical mood dictates, have real expression and are shockingly decipherable without any compromise of the extremity. This is class stuff. And it has to be added that the band as a whole come across well as musicians and the production is good, too. But the songs?
No. Not for me. The key sound of the riffs is pretty generic modern bm; harsh but with a produced edge that lends it a terminal industrial feel with the inevitable, predictable discordant/melodic flourishes at the trailing edges. They slide through time changes without pulling the listener with them or chug towards death metal but never really touch it. Nothing hooks me… That guitar sound that I mentioned on the first song? That’s it, right there. I don’t ask to be able to hum things (I love the Axis Of Perdition ferfuksake) but this just gives me nothing to hold beyond short term memory. Nothing with that head held high personality needed. It just fades into a blur by the end. I have listened to this over and over and that is always the result. I am sorry.
Actually, slightly untrue. The acoustic passages? Exemplary. Great guitar work, atmosphere, thought… They should seriously think of at least doing an ep of that stuff. It would be compelling and original and challenging and they could clearly pull it off. It works so well that the crash into the sheet metal sound is all the more disappointing.
So remember: If you like Watain, or this modern bm sound described above then look Seth up. I may have found my true black metal blind spot and you may fall utterly in love. But me, here, now, I have to bow out and leave this space to others. Clearly not my area. Sorry guys.
(5/10 Gizmo)
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