The flock is gathered once more, penned in waiting for the wolves to pounce and render flesh. The follow up to debut album ‘Deus qui non mentitur’, sees the French artists BÂ’A reflecting on good and evil and interpreting the four horsemen of the Apocalypse. Perhaps the inner meanings of Egrégore are lost in the translation but one can easily get to grips with their delivery which is once again spat out with vehemence by ex-Anorexia Nervosa and CNK frontman Rms Hreidmarr along with ex Hyrgal musicians Maximilien Brigliadori and Emmanuel Zuccaro. This is a feast of elite black metal which takes no prisoners over its 6 well-formed and deadly attacks.
The first of these at almost 10-minutes in length ‘In Umbra et Luce’ takes us into a shadowy world of darkness and orthodoxy. Guitar lines shiver and tremble, drums slowly beat and Latin is intoned in scholarly fashion. As everything takes form on the back of the first blood-curdling roar there is a feel of theatricality from the frontman who over the course of the journey, spits, gibbers and screams his way through the album with aplomb. Beneath it is a stygian melody and sense of foreboding along with the trappings of chanting monks. It’s effective overall, morose and dark. I am not finding much in the way of light here that’s for sure. Surprisingly this lengthy sermon has proven to become my least favourite track on the album as everything after is assuredly deadly.
‘Domitor’ for instance simply dominates. It’s fast and furious with a cleaving mindset and an even more urgent clamour from the wretched, gargling vocals. It’s a spiteful diatribe picking off the shreds of meat from the carrion but before just bones are left employs one of several strange effects on the album in the form of a clanking spectral sound haunting in the background. Along with the doomy bass heft its enough to send a shiver down the spine and there’s a corvine screech too, as what sounds like a raven or crow comes to the feast and grabs leftover pickings. ‘Bellum’ serves as a feudal rampage, intensity fired out over gabbling vocals and a windswept battlefield. There are times when this gives the recent Funeral Mist a run for its money and this is an album that has proven to be equally addictive with the destructive force on display. I wish there was some lyrical insight but we are left with what sounds like some sampled background speech before a strange cyclic whirring noise is a further frenzied accompaniment to the madness. Seriously what the hell is going on here?
‘Fames’ brings it all down, famine tempered with a slow ponderous beat spreading hungrily as Hreidmarr stalks like a spectre of death and bodies pile up in his wake. In a word “ghoulish.” The absolutely rabid ‘Obitusque’ is the flip-side and even goes into an excellent pine-scented sounding folky swagger that would not be out of place on a Taake number, proving this album really has got a bit of everything about it. Final number ‘Urbi et Orbi Clamant’ seemingly translating to ‘They shout to the city and the world’ is a final decimating attack with no shortage of screaming from the rooftops from the now utterly deranged vocalist. Stopping on a sudden beat and last rasp it is assuredly over having left the listener feeling totally wrecked but triumphantly so having partaken in the glorious sound of carnage.
(8.5/10 Pete Woods)
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