Hot on the heels of an album by labelmates and sharers of split release Griffon, a new album by French medievalists Darkenhöld appears. Great news for those of us who want to dip back in time and escape to a world of castles, swords and no doubt a little sorcery. We venture to a time of spells and incantations, heraldry and fantastic bestiary’s and that’s just with some rough translations of the track titles in front of us. The core trio of Cervantes, Aldébaran and Aboth have been crafting their blackened fantasy metal over 5 full length albums and musically never fail to captivate as putting on one of their discs definitely transports you to another world and allows you to immerse yourself into the lore of bygone times. It’s a welcome escape from all that is going on today. What I like about them is that although essentially crafted around a bedrock of black metal there is so much more going on within their musical world, we will come to that, it’s just a case of storming the ramparts and gaining admittance first, watch out for arrows and boiling tar being poured on us as we try and get over the drawbridge and into the courtyard first.
Well opener ‘Oriflamme,’ is there to confront those of us who make it without being set on fire and what a track it is. Talk about storming the ramparts. There’s something completely feudal and even Trollish about the huge swaggering and victorious charge this delivers and it is easy to imagine our triumphant forces finally storming the keep, unleashed after a long siege. It’s something one might expect from a Finnish battle metal group and the main melody has a somewhat reminiscent flavour of traditionalism about it, one where one listen will have you completely hooked, drinking of mead and slamming of fists is obligatory. The French snarly vocals complete the charge and although at times furious the track is interspersed with some mystical Gallic flair and clean choral parts. Forteresse breached we gallop in, some old nostalgic keyboard sound wafts around the charge with arcane flavours suggesting that magic may well have been employed here, some spoken word parts make it all the more intriguing and some lush acoustic guitar-work enforces melody and completely captivates. There’s also some classic sounding metal guitar leads flowing gracefully over the booming drums and it all works fantastically and it has to be said with uttermost seriousness, not the slightest whiff of camembert to be found here although the unwashed heroes do pen and ink a little on the unsavoury side. We can indeed have fun here too and the jaunty likes of ‘Incantations’ are great songs to just let hair down and jig around to, they must be great fun live although am not sure if fans wave plastic swords around having never been lucky enough to see the band. You can grab a breath in the atmospheric slowdowns too as the wind whistles and we get a passage of acoustic plainsong. One second you are caught in a whirlwind of flurrying guitars, the next the storm breaks with thunder echoing over an acoustic framework. As the track in this case ‘Mystique de la vouivre’ charges back in again it’s nigh on impossible not to grab the air guitar and blaze away along with it all.
After a midway interlude the fist-pumping gravitas of ‘Héraldique’ paints its colours, bristling with gruff and forceful energy. Complete with what by now can only be described as a chamber music sounding acoustic part the album’s middle stages have us smack bang in the Middle Ages. If we were wondering where to find them its time for some ‘Bestiaire fantastique,’ best be careful they are likely to bite, set on fire or turn you quickly into a corpse by any means necessary. Perhaps a wild dragon flight is the reward as this surges into rampant energetic flurries and a vocalist super-charged by it all as we dive through the clouds. The giddy power of the track really accentuating the images in my head. Another thing that strikes on the formidable penultimate number ‘Le sanctuaire embrasé’ are some squealing guitar motifs that are going to have Emperor fans excited, I look on it as a little bit of Reverence and there’s nothing wrong with that. All good things have to come to an end and things do here in the Archmage’s Cabinet.. Luckily its just a bit of dungeon-synth lurking to draw things to a close on a wildly imaginative and enjoyable album.
(8.5/10 Pete Woods)
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