Dunno but I always find it a little…well, humbling when a band sends in a full, beautifully designed digipak CD of their debut EP release. It at least should give the reviewer pause to think about what this music means to the artist. The artists in question here are Kanibaal (vocals, lyrics) and Taciturne (everything else) and they are another addition to the amazingly vibrant Quebec scene.
Initially, from opener ‘Des Pas Dans La Neige’, we get bitterly cold, biting winter black metal. Winds howl, snow crunches and a harsh, ponderous riff crawls through the bleak night. There is a deep Burzum feel here from the tempo to the sharp buzzing riffs, but also maybe a good streak of Darkthrone in the rawness and the attitude and the excellent vocals and a little early Forteresse in the atmosphere. It’s good, doomy stuff, with a good vision and its own personality crawling in the darkness.
The remainder of the EP is split into three parts of ‘A Traverse La Tourmente’. It’s only really in the third part where the tempo picks up, really, flinging a wild and thrashy edge into the mid, underlying the rawness in Janvier.
In a little under thirty minutes, Janvier create a very promising impression. The music is committed and, if sitting here in what passes for a heatwave in the UK I end up bone chilled, well that speaks volumes. The production is perhaps a little thin here and there, and maybe a little more tempo variation might heighten the musical topography, but I like this a lot as a debut and would thoroughly recommend anyone into atmospheric, harsh black metal should take a listen.
(7/10 Gizmo)
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