You know how it is when you get French extreme metal to listen to and review… expect the unexpected! This debut full length follows a demo and EP out in 2015 and 2017 respectively and whilst I have not heard those two efforts, I can firmly say that Viande (which I believe means meat) are yet another top-quality act added to the Transcending Obscurity roster. With an album title that I think roughly translates “the abyss devours soul”, that is exactly what Viande do with their brand of blackened death filth. All the song titles are in French which I won’t translate but suffice to say this French trio are as caustic, malignant as anything you’ll allow your ears to be subjected to in 2022.
Opener ‘Les Dents Du Gouffre’ begins with some creepy intro sounds, setting the scene nicely for the grisly Armageddon that follows. With beastly vocals ingrained into all the tracks this is a hideous horrifying sonic experience tempered by chaotic posturing and occasional uplifts in mood, and I do mean only occasionally. With a war metal foundation too, this band unleashes a potent and toxic inhumanity, evident on the opener but also follower ‘Le Vente Monde’. The guttural disembowelling ethos the band has crafted is terrifying, monstrous and slithers like a grotesque beast into the very essence of your being. It also has that unnerving feeling too and whilst much of this album is obliterating in speed it also plunges into thunderous miasmic slime.
‘Miroir Decharne’ brandishes that blackened edge far more, as the songs blasting ferocity has a war like death metal feel, utilising the chaotic structuring to great effect, highly controlled as acts like Vital Remains and Incantation came to mind here. With hypnotic horror transfixing the listener the nigh on seven-minute assault of ‘Le Souffle Des Os’ typifies this bands sonic shock and awe deploying fine subtle riff switches as the song plummets into a sludgy suffocating maelstrom. Likewise, with ‘Traitre A La Vie’ where the intro backing noises create an unsettling aura, using a gradual fade-in technique that has that horror flick delivery to it and hints at a Morbid Angel touch, if only rudimentary.
Crawling like a malformed creature ‘Lueurs De Cendres’ has a hugely dense ethos, its half-blasted speed is coupled to a variety of riff changes as the tune embeds backing noises before the return to full blast producing that inhuman intensity the band delivers so well. ‘Langues De Brume’ closes this excellent album with a pulverising slab of doom-death initially, the pacing has that asphyxiating style creeping along sinisterly producing a drone like approach I liked and contrasts with the outright speed of the previous tunes, but no less penetratingly dense.
A fine full length from Viande, one for all those who love horrifying blackened death metal, one for those who want to inflict mortal sonic pain on themselves as you’ll be hard pressed to find an album as noxious, poisonous and soul destroying as this.
(8.5/10 Martin Harris)
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