Two tracks of over 20 minutes each in a post black metal style sounds like a weighty affair. This is the French band’s second album release.
In the beginning it is atmospheric. After narrative by a sound-effected voice, we enter a gloomy and melancholic world, enhanced the sounds of a cello and distorted symphony. The storm rises and it is like a sombre and swirling black symphony. Desperation fills the air. The narrator returns to preach briefly as the sad scene bears down on us thanks to the patient, pungent and overwhelming backdrop. It is devastating. “Malédiction” (Curse) reeks death. It is devastating. The bells ring faintly. There is the sound of a choir and of a piano, but this is about despairing cries and hopelessness in the face of an inscrutable and merciless storm. As a piece of music, it is compelling and taking us to places we don’t really want to be going, so dark is it, but this piece is majestic and sweeps us along its dark tide. It’s creative, transforming into a quiet and sombre passage, infecting us with thoughts of rancid rooms, crumbling buildings and loneliness. Seamlessly, it builds back up to the storm. Everywhere there is menace and a creeping atmosphere of foreboding. As it ends, it’s as if we’re marching to war but wherever we’re marching to, it’s a dark and scary place.
“He brought to me in a plastic bag the dress my mother was wearing at the time of her murder”. So begins the spooky beginning of the second piece “Déliverance”. Swathes of sadness weigh heavily as another sombre black symphony snakes through our psyche and continues its epic course. In Cauda Venenum do not shock. Instead they fill the air with the darkest sounds of gloom and provide an unrefusable invitation to drink in the poison. The cellist adds further atmospheric intensity. It’s the perfect instrument for this setting. Post metal doom surrounds us but it is surrounded by intrigue. “I am obsessed by obsession”, the narrator informs us, as “Déliverance” wends its dark way. This all has a Burzumesque sinister atmosphere but on a wider musical scale. A haunting choral echo precedes yet another rise in tension, signalled by the cello once more, but all the while the steady tune gnaws away and won’t let us of the hook. Even when it’s quiet, it’s devastatingly sad with the pianist and cellist dreamily pumping out their own tragic story. The sheer weight of this epic melancholy induced goosebumps. But what is amazing is the thought behind this. The band chant in unison as if fighting back. Amid the heaviness, we find ourself embroiled in ghastly but epic scenes of helplessness. And in one final twist, our narrator ends with the realisation that the deliverance lay in writing about his mother’s death.
C’est plus que magnifique. I salute the cohesiveness of artistic thought that has led to this amazing piece of music. Every gram of atmosphere is eked out of this feat of black metal munificence. The construction is superb. “G.O.H.E” is gripping. The creativity, range of ideas and musicianship are of the highest quality. “G.O.H.E’ is like a brilliant star in the midst of death.
(9.5/10 Andrew Doherty)
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