Hellébore - Anouof Thwo

 

 

HELLÉBORE - Anouof Thwo

2013

Indie

 

Dark, yet bright as a cloudless sky in the middle of the night, Hellébore is a one man atmospheric black metal band from Québec City. Given the plethora of "metal noir" bands in the Belle Province capital, this one comes nonetheless as a refreshing comet in the genre's horizon.

 

Anouof Thwo was made available online, and then released on cassette in 2013. Despite the forty minutes length, this album is (mostly) articulated around two long songs, "Aootw" and "Les Martiens étaient là...", the former being without a doubt the best moment of the album. We also find two short intro / interludes, "Étoiles d'eau" and "Udrea", and one 6-minutes progressive song, "... réfléchis dans l'eau".

 

Lo-fi and visibly homemade, it has the primitive raw emotional charge of a constellation of other black metal bands. Nonetheless, one particular quality caught my attention and showed that Hellébore has something distinct from the mass. As expressed by the cover artwork, Anouof Thwo has a certain "naivety" of ideas, one that is natural for a newcomer, but harder to retrieve for a seasoned musician. It takes the shape of weird electro sounds and questionable programming; a very slippery slope that could normally require a project to stay anonymous, but in some cases, like this one, it just happen to become the magic ingredient that sets the band apart. Hellébore integrates loop reverberation over the guitars as well as 80's space-like synth effects to create a captivating soundscape. Sprinkled over the music, it adds a lot to the atmospheric quality of the whole. Also, positioned in the middle of the five songs, we find an interlude called "Udrea" whose electro/trip hop rhythmic, keyboards and off voice (samples?) bring a short and uncanny momentum between the long black metal songs.

 

Visibly a one-man thing, it is not a surprise to find programmed drums on Anouof Thwo. Along with the repetitive and hypnotic guitar riffing, the oversaturated vocals, and the rich layers of synth in the distance, it brings Hellébore closer to the universes of Neige et Noirceur and Poète Maudit.

 

It should be obvious at this point: Anouof Thwo includes incomprehensible names and meanings--or maybe it's just me who couldn't find the meanings--making the project obscure and mysterious... Other titles such as "Les Martiens étaient là" (Martians were there) give another reading however, one that is not as serious and that makes me think the Maker of Hellébore is having fun with us.

 

Overall, this black star is a good discovery. With its odd alien flavour, Anouof Thwo is a very interesting addition to the Québec atmospheric black metal landscape. Let's hope Hellébore picks up on these strengths and releases a follow up to this odyssey sometimes in the near future.

 

http://hellebore.bandcamp.com/

http://solynieve.bigcartel.com/product/hellebore-anouof-thwo

 

Away - Cities

AWAY - Cities
2013
Utech Records

Michel "Away" Langevin, famous for his drumming in the avant-garde band Voivod and for his psychedelic sci-fi album art, has had many side projects over the years, some more surprising than others. Musically speaking, we should mention the superb electro-rock project Kosmos, and also Les Ékorchés, an acoustic-metal outfit, among others. He also designed many album covers, from the instrumental Humanoid to the technical progressive band Behold the Arctopus, Dave Grohl's Probot side-project, and most of Voivod's discography. A hard cover biography, "Worlds Away", was written about him by none other than Martin Popoff in 2009, offering for the first time a holistic portrait of the artist and his legacy.

At first glance, Cities comes as another UFO in Away's portfolio: it is experimental and artistic rather than being instrumental or musical. Consisting of a selection of recordings made between 2010 and 2012, the cd is a series of soundtracks from various locations across the world. From an extra-terrestrial point of view, the theme almost seems to be the visual and audible congregation of mankind in its daily habit. For you and me, however, it's hard to separate the spectacular events from the ordinary when we don't know the context of these recordings.

While listening to Cities, we end up trying to guess the backstory of each chapter: are we in Montréal's metro? Is this a bohemian musician in a public square in Europe? On another track, is it an intercultural celebration that we hear? Back to Montréal in 2012, is this one of the famous student demonstrations? Why do we hear a series of names in Mexico City in 2012? Is Away trying to show us excerpts of the cultural exchanges in each of these cities or is he just interested in music used in public spaces across the world? While we don't find answers to these questions in the booklet, it is clear that the individual events aren't the real subject of this album. Likewise, the track titles are both abstract and anonymous: "Europe 2011", "Chicago 2012", "Montréal 2010", etc. While the string of stories is somewhat obscure, all of these public spaces tell us that despite our different cultures, we share a common experience of the city.

Like the lives behind its walls, Cities has many different layers. The top skin is made of Michel "Away" Langevin's talented, eerie graphic art. The white cd (white on white) slips out of a plain black envelope, folded in a matte 4-page booklet. There are two drawings, printed in white and silver, depicting a single entity surrounded by a cityscape. It is simple, but powerful.

The artistic approach to this album is close to an audio novel: not a documentary, but a traveller's personal journal. This form of testimony has been popular throughout history, especially for explorers. In Away's case, it is unpretentious, abstract, and anonymous to a certain degree. It is not narrated, and there aren't any audio traces of the traveller. On Cities, we are a mute witness into what Away has been recording; but we are only experiencing glimpses of it.

The graphic art of Cities pays hommage to another graphic genre: the wordless novel. Mostly associated with engraving, these mostly black-and-white books used to be precursors to the comic strips. They emerged in the 20th Century, parallel to the idea of a Global Village, like universal translators that helped share personal stories from one continent to another. We can think of the dark realities of the Great Depression as depicted by Giacomo Patri and Laurence Hyde, or the dramatic figures of Lynd Ward (picture below).

 

Frans Masereel (1889-1972) is regarded as the first master of wordless novels. Between the two World Wars, at a time when cities were starting to change drastically and mankind was experiencing the good, the bad and the ugly of these new challenges, the wordless novel was a way to express the hopes, challenges, frustrations, and despair of many of these men and women.

There is a strong iconological link between Away's Cities and the wordless novels. Beyond the iconographic elements of the cover artwork of Cities, we become witnesses to this fast-paced, dynamic urban environment. Although it is an anonymous journey, the omnipresent mute presence behind the recording tells us we are single entities watching and listening, as this world turns. In other words, on Cities, we are ghosts wandering through places and time.

Away has a strong artistic background, and while his new project steps further in the avant-garde audio garden, it also follows a rich artistic heritage: one of graphic art and storytelling.

Neige et Noirceur - Natura Mortis Sonoris

NEIGE ET NOIRCEUR - Natura Mortis Sonoris
2013
Dusktone

At first glance, Natura Mortis Sonoris is like an odd ball in Neige et Noirceur's discography. First, this is not a black metal album and it will seem out of place for those who have only heard the post-2010 albums (especially La Seigneurie des Loups, and Hymnes de la Montagne Noire). Second, this is a compilation of songs taken from different albums, EPs and demos: out of their original context, the atmosphere these songs used to create is somehow lost, or at least heavily altered.

All of Neige et Noirceur's albums/EPs that I know had an atmospheric black metal 'thing' at their core. There were drums, guitars, and lyrics. Natura Mortis Sonoris goes the opposite direction. It is shapeless, boneless, but scary nonetheless. The songs are either excerpts, extended, or simply different versions from the ones we find on the original albums. They cover many of the pre-2010 releases, starting with the very first 2005 demo, Pour te Dire la Fin. Like a hand-picked selection of monochromatic Smarties, they are the dark tones that dressed the original albums in their mourning clothes.

This compilation may be a curved ball for Neige et Noirceur, but it achieves its goal perfectly. It shows us what stands under the ghoulish atmospheric black metal cloak: melancholy, solitude, fear, and darkness. These feelings have been moving every single release, but on Natura Mortis Sonoris they are pure.

On the one hand, there are very few beats or musical tempos throughout the 15 songs, except maybe for "3rd Hymne Fragment", "Aux Portes de la Crypte" or "Loudun (part 1)". Even when "Orlok" kicks in with a brief and distant blastbeat, it is covered by a heavy layer of keyboards. On the other hand, this compilation contains a diversity of noises, instruments, and artistic directions. There are footsteps, wind, animal sounds, bells, keyboards, acoustic guitars, off voices (movie excerpts), echoes, and space/void. The songs come in and out like fading waves, or like feverish nightmares that keeps pulling us back into an endless night.

For an atmospheric album, this is refreshing and very interesting. It is as dynamic as an album from This is Past, yet as haunting as Wolvserpent. All of that plus a unique, personal aesthetic.

Natura Mortis Sonoris reminded me why I liked Neige et Noirceur in the first place. The sculptured atmospheres are very suggestive: keyboard and synth sounds are definitely artificial, while animated sounds (animals, humans, wind) are plenty. Whether we call it occult, scary, cartoonish or colourful, it definitely has a strong character.

While I really enjoy this album - just as much as any of Neige et Noirceur's full lengths - I find the songs too short. Atmosphere requires time; in order to lose myself into a dark melancholic album, I need a catharsis of more than 3 or 4 minutes. Sure enough, there is a 12+ minutes "Loin des Hommes, Prêt [sic] des Bêtes", but I feel that more of these would have allowed the listener to dive deeper into the Neige et Noirceur world. This is unfortunate, since everything else is flawless.

http://dusktone.bigcartel.com
http://www.dusktone.eu
http://www.zimondofin.com/neigeetnoirceur/

Warground - Sorrowful Sounds of Emptiness (EP)

WARGROUND - Sorrowful Sounds of Emptiness
2013
Depressive Illusions Records

The title says it all. Sorrowful Sounds of Emptiness is the soundtrack for a season in damnation. It is gloomy, foggy, chilly, and static like a curtain of black heavy clouds that doesn't want to move away from the sun. However, this is not a doom, a funeral doom nor a black metal album, but a collection of plain atmospheric compositions.

It comes in an A5 dvd-case format, perfect to conjure the vastness of the music. Inside, we find three "songs" of 7 to 9 minutes that speak the same language. First song "Broken" is like a fall, a magnetic call of the Great Void, evoken by waves of keys/synth. It is monolithic, offering almost no variations and an unclear structure. Heavy yet vaporous, it brings the listener into a state of unbalance. "The Darkened Path of Sadness" follows, with a few reverberated notes in the dark, muffled by a veil of atmospheric long keys notes. The sky clears a bit, but only to discover that the sun is gone: it's nighttime, and it's cold. The trilogy of soundscapes ends with "A Land Taken by the Nothing", probably my favorite of the three compositions. Here we are presented with the essence of the title. We find a few delicate notes, gently laid like faeries corpses resting on fallen leaves. I would not qualify it as depressive, but rather as ominous because of the black atmosphere weighing on us through repetitive waves of keys.

In my book, an atmospheric album needs a lot of qualificatives. Sorrowful Sounds of Emptiness is what I would call a tunnel of emotions. These are monolithic and monochromatic creations. There is a limited range of instruments involved and the structures are relatively straightforward. When I listen to these songs, I feel absorbed into a vortex, but not drained of emotions, as if the songs are channels of thoughts rather than seeds of negativity. Constricted in the middle of the night, the songs capture something we do not exactly understand, something that has been morphed into sounds. In other words, Sorrowful Sounds of Emptiness is hypnotic and contemplative. Warground aptly says about its music: "There are those paths inside oneself that dare not be followed".

The 3 songs could have been soundtracks to heavier atmospheric metal tracks, or sublime outros on albums. Nonetheless, released together, the three soundscapes make an interesting ensemble.

Sorrowful Sounds of Emptiness comes as an interesting step in the Warground discography. The one-man raw black metal name has been in existence since 2012 and has two other releases already. Check these out as well, for they would appeal to fans of the raw depressive black metal cult entity Nortt. Overall, I find interesting to have a different look at Warground, and hear this exploration of sounds.

https://www.facebook.com/WargroundBand
http://depressiveillusions.com/

Loviatar - Druid's Curse (EP)

LOVIATAR - Druid's Curse
2013
Indie

Druid's Curse is the third installment in the Loviatar EP trilogy. About four months after the previous Widow's Flame and a year and a half after the Eternal Sons debut, we find another 3-songs cd, housed in a digi sleeve, with a similar layout, the same line-up, and a similar length. The least we can say is that Loviatar is consistent and approaches the construction of its EPs very seriously. Both on the visual and the musical point of view, Druid's Curse strenghtens very efficiently the band's discography, like an affirmation of its song writing and band imagery.

The fantasy continues: Loviatar's world rocks around mythical characters, as displayed by the beautiful artwork and the tracks' name.

The powerful "Curse of the Hamadryad" launches the journey with a thick wall of sound. All the instruments are burning hot and signal that we are in for a ride. The drum's skins are more silky and defined than before, the guitars have been pulled back a little bit in the mix, and there is a creamy coat of reverb tying them to the vocals' effects. Incredibly good and catchy for a post-metal / doom act, vocals are clean and upfront. The bass guitar makes use of a slight distortion and can be easily distinguished with its rich bottom and guitar picking, a sound and technique that reminds me of Mouth of the Architect, Cult of Luna and Buried Inside. It sometimes slides up and down, follows the bass drum chirurgically, or walks around like a punk rock band, adding interesting colors to the music. As for the guitars, they cover the rest of the spectrum, from left to right, from North to the South, with either atmospheric, piccolo, or straightforward playing.

The guitar work is probably best illustrated in "Elephant Graveyard", the second and instrumental track. While the bass gets clean and modest, the guitars take all the place available. They start with a few atmospheric, isolated notes, building gradually an emotive charge until it reaches its apex with lots of cymbals and chords, and dies again. When arrangements are this good, the music speaks for itself.

The doom gland is sollicitated anew on "Frost Druid", the third and last track of the EP. It has a few dragging and bluesy notes, some eruption into heavier post-metal, with bits of piccolo picking and sparks of hi-hat cutting through the reverb coating of the mix - all good ingredients to approach traditional doom while staying away from the depressive tone of it. This song is a direct dialogue with "Eternal Famine", the first song on the first EP: not only because of the doomy riffs, but also because of the "oh-oh-oh" chants. Positioned last on the EP, it is a clever reference addressed to those who have been following the band so far, coming full circle with Loviatar's EP trilogy.

Druid's Curse is 12 minutes well invested. There are no missteps, nothing is lacking, and nothing is redundant. It is without a doubt the best of the three Loviatar EPs; something you can spin any time, any day, without getting tired of it. It is also one of the best examples of Mike Bond's recording and production skills.

Druid's Curse is definitely one of the best Canadian metal EPs of 2013.

http://loviatar.bandcamp.com/album/druids-curse
http://loviatardoom.com/

Sombres Forêts - La Mort du Soleil

SOMBRES FORÊTS – La mort du soleil
2013
Sepulchral Productions

Métal noir, the Quebec self identification for francophone black metal, has become quite a fruitful nest. From Forteresse to Chasse-Galerie, and from Mysothéisme to Neige et Noirceur, it offers a large variety of genres – covering all of the orthodox, raw, pagan and atmospheric ends of the spectrum. Far from being second grade stagnant or nostalgic, the métal noir scene got the attention of a worldwide horde of black metallers around the world for its fine line-ups and avant-garde bands.

Quebec City’s Sombres Forêts is no newcomer. The offspring of brainchild Annatar, it built a solid reputation over two albums, including 2008’s Royaume de Glace. Annatar also participated with fellow label mates Neptune and Icare from Gris to a well-received side project, Miserere Luminis in 2009. Moving the journey further, La Mort du Soleil, the latest release under the Sombres Forêts moniker, brings these ideas to a new level.

La Mort du Soleil falls right into the atmospheric black metal category. Mid paced, it breathes all the way through, with a balance between heavy instrumentation and melancholic piano or guitar passages. With an absence of blast beats and very few moments of piccolo guitars attack, we get closer to latter-days Drudkh (for example on “L’Éther”) than any post-metal take on atmospheric black metal. Layers and layers of nature-like sounds, including thunderstorms, chilly winds and unknown sounds have been added, as well as additional vocals, extra guitars, and percussions. There is an impressive mastery of reversed guitars incorporation across the landscape, and rich yet delicate coats of reverb added to the music, reminding me vaguely of Arcana Coelestia and Dolorian. At certain moments, I even thought I could hear the very subtle guitar familiarity with some French avant-garde black metal bands such as Deathspell Omega (“La Disparition”).

This tasty mix of technical approaches is serving well the general atmosphere proposed by the album. Deeply melancholic, it navigates the seas of 19^th Century Romanticism. The artwork itself, designed by French artist Fursy Teyssier, is a manifest homage to J.M. William Turner’s (1775-1851) paintings. Dark, stormy and indefinite, but also beautifully powerful, it depicts perfectly the moods and atmosphere found on the eloquently-titled La Mort du Soleil.

Sombres Forêts’ third album is grandiose and its greater merit is that it will undoubtly appeal to a larger audience than métal noir bands usually do. For many, this will probably be the first atmospheric black metal album they listen to and enjoy. For many others (myself included), I think it is an album that continues the path already laid by a few others, including Gris. On that note, it would be hard not to draw comparisons with the latter: both bands are using trademark suffering screams, both released their latest album through Sepulchral Productions on the same day, and both crossed path recently in Miserere Luminis. Check out both bands, and pick up a copy of La Mort du Soleil.

www.sepulchralproductions.com
www.sepulchralproductions.bigcartel.com
www.sombresforets.blogspot.ca

Dopethrone - III

DOPETHRONE - III
2012
Indie

As its title suggests, III is the third album from Dopethrone. At this stage we know exactly what to expect from the Montréal trio: a dirty cocktail made with the crushing heaviness of sludge, the trippy grooves of stoner metal, and the general simplicity and darkness of doom. You only have to think about Electric Wizard (where the band took its name) to get a general idea of the music, although it evolved into something else not unfamiliar with the likes of Sleep or Zoroaster. Being precursors of other stoner/doom bands on the Montréal metal scene, and an inspiration for many (including Buffalo Theory Mtl), Dopethrone developed a cult following and generated an interest abroad by touring extensively.

The title III is somewhat appropriate for it follows closely the previous two offerings. III is all about continuity, bringing no suprises, and slowly moving one step further to make it even better than before. This time around, Dopethrone got a more defined production; something we notice immediately on the mid-hi spectrum as the cymbals tend to be brighter and cover more than before. For the rest, we have the exact same style of music, about the same number of songs and length as on the previous Dark Foil, and the oh-so-good filthy patches of dirt stuck on their guitars. The themes seem to continue their journey onto the seas of dope and murder - we even find a cool little sampler speech on "Storm Reefer" about marijuana, set against a backdrop of dirty bass and drum.

Playing a Dopethrone album make your house go humid and warm every time. Left alone the rings of smoke, we could call it swamp metal... It's nice and ugly, its moving and depressed at the same time. I find the sheer heaviness of the band to be highly addictive, in good parts due to the granular distortion of the guitars, the low tuning, and the monstrous screaming. The riffs and grooves have this rockish twist that make'em easily enjoyable. And with such a beautiful cover artwork, one can't avoid the Dopethrone.

Check it out.
http://dopethrone.bandcamp.com/