‘Black ‘n’ blues’ apparently is how Glorior Belli choose to pitch themselves these days. With this, their fifth album, the Frenchmen seem to have truly left behind the orthodox/Watain rip-off (delete as you see fit) associations that beset their debut ‘O Laudate Dominus’ and continue to bravely explore the swampy, southern-tinged sounds that they began exploring with 2009’s ‘Meet us at the Southern Cross’.
One glimpse at the album title suggests the blues influence creeping into Glorior Belli’s more recent works would be making its presence felt even more firmly this time around and that is most definitely the case. Gnarly pentatonic licks open the album with a distinct southern-fried swagger and it’s only when mainman Julien opens his throat to begin screaming that the black metal bedrock of Glorior Belli becomes apparent.
What also becomes apparent is that whoever rubber-stamped the audio mix of this album needs a SERIOUS talking to. The production here is quite simply abysmal – the drums are relegated to thin, background clicks with the kick & snare virtually indistinguishable from each other, the guitars are irritatingly honky and the vocals absurdly over-loud. When things get frantic (such as on the more blast-beat heavy fury of ‘Wolves at my Door’), the drums literally disappear from the soundscape. It’s a thin, digital-sounding mess and totally at odds with the swampy, greasy vibe the band are clearly trying to tap into.
This is all rather odd as they clearly had a budget to play with and the production on earlier records is excellent (2007’s more traditional ‘Manifestations of the Raging Beast’ sounds massive).
It’s a big problem. The lurching, bluesy refrains that underpin tracks such as ‘Ain’t No Pit Deep Enough’ and ‘I Asked for Wine, He Gave me Blood’ really need some power behind them – an organic, weighty sound would have brought these songs to life and really helped give them some much-needed juice.
As it is, the limitations of a palette consisting solely of standard black metal ‘norsecore’ riffs intertwined with some pentatonic standards is only thrown into sharp relief. There’s something about this approach that doesn’t hang together – occasionally Glorior Belli hit their stride or pull something unexpected out of the bag (‘Backwoods Bayou’ is an effective instrumental whilst ‘Build For Discomfort’ merges uncompromising doom with some genuinely hefty passages) but by and large, it doesn’t really hang together.
After repeated attempts to try and get a handle on this, it must be said that ‘Gators Rumble, Chaos Unfurls’ doesn’t sit well with me at all. There’s something very ‘try-hard’ about the whole exercise – be it the clean vocals that pop up in ‘A Hoax, A Croc!’ (which sounds like a Mastodon B-side), the knowingly quirky songtitles or the one-dimensional concept of chucking blues riffs into a black metal album. Put simply, it’s insubstantial, rather half-baked and no where near as clever or as daring as its makers would have you believe.
Glorior Belli may have jettisoned some of the more generic elements of yesteryear and ventured into hitherto unexplored territories of swampy black metal but I fear they’re in danger of getting bogged down out there. Here’s hoping they can find some firmer ground next time around.
(5.5/10 Frank Allain)
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