Autokrator - Autokrator [2015]

Drone and death. Two things which would have seemed irreversibly oblique had you told me about it 20 years ago, when death metal had just gleaned its initial flourish, but here we are, at the edge of the world, listening to a French band with an album capable of satisfying followers of both genres, at least in theory. Autokrator. Oh, the autonomy. We've all had our fair share bands only too incapable of governing their own creativity and resulting in veritable travesties of musical produce, and a smaller percentage of bands which can skillfully exploit their unabashed titles and work out miracle albums, across the heavy metal spectrum. Autokrator doesn't quite belong to either camp. Simply put: there's a place, deep within the reaches of an industrial complex shrouded with clouds and gloom, perpetually fixated in production and yielding the same output with pretty much every return, coagulated in its moody ambient obsession. That's where you'll likely encounter ''Autokrator''.

Now, as much as the term 'drone/death' feels slightly alien to me, there's no denying that the Frenchmen are following a similar path to the Americans Aevangelist with their brand of irrevocable, tumultuous black/death shaking the very foundations of your cortex, or the calculated, Deathspell Omega-esque dissimilitude of Imperial Triumphant; but even so my resemblances wouldn't be entirely exact since there's a very industrial foundation to found here, not so slick or street-like as Ministry or Godflesh, but a more carefully plotted, systematic rendering of bulky, impenetrable chords redolent of Portal or Impetuous Ritual. Certainly the 'drone' is there, because Autokrator flesh out their riffs in some of the most mundane fashions I've recently heard, with dronish chord upon chord flung with unobtrusive reverb and patterned segments; yet I could also complain that between these gigantic hulks they propagate and the darkly atmosphere present, the Frenchmen aren't particularly interested in spicing their material up with detailed melodies or intricate high-end fret melodies the way their countrymen Deathspell Omega would have evoked excesses of nightmare and agony. Fuzzed out and implicitly linear, ''Autokrator'' is only slightly shy of becoming a dark marital industrial project - think In Slaughter Natives or Kreuzweg Ost - especially on the final track ''Optimus Princeps'', and as inclined the Frenchmen may be to spooning off your brain with these buzzed exhortations of sound and rhythm, I've found that none of the songs here cling to head, which isn't too surprising, but moreover, they lose their hypnotic and cranial power a little too quickly - in fact I found myself scrambling for ways to keep myself occupied by the third track.

Every track is nearly a duplicate of the other, with little or no nuance offered in between, therefore I find it silly to point out specific highlights on this record.While records of this kind are definitely difficult pills to swallow, after a acclimatization of the ears they should be taken in entire packages for the maximum, potent effect, yet ''Autokrator'' feels like a drug which loses its initial gloss of hypnosis shortly after the first injection, like a cheap, painful high. The drums here can be annoying for some. Personally I didn't have a problem with them since the sharp, industrialized snares provide with a few splotches of white in a a gossamer otherwise completely embroidered in darkness, but beyond that the cymbals were weak and the dynamics department therefore surprisingly meager. Some props go to the few ambient effects which somehow made it into an album almost completely filled with simplistic, gloomy synthesizers and hard-boiled riffcraft, giving the listener a few rare moments of breath and exploring more atmosphere than the instruments could ever hope to. As much as I sometimes enjoyed the aural and industrial punch of the rhythms from time to time, there's never enough variation to make the album worth reveling in. The majestic darkness of Deathspell Omega or Aevangelist is simply not there. The vocals, the musical equivalent of coughing out wet coals out of your asshole, are there, but even that hellish diarrhea feels unsatisfactory.

This is a record which strangely enough ticks all the boxes except for intricacy as far as this industrial black/death metal niche goes, but most of those ticks are, well... half-ticks. Unnerving, cyclical displeasure runs throughout. While one half of me wonders if this was the album those engineers and worker stormtroopers were jamming out to be while Death Star was being constructed in the midst of a spatial vacuum, the other half thinks it's probably a good idea to lay off this record, especially when there are so many other monstrous alternatives lying aground, although ''Autokrator'' still isn't terrible by any means.

Highlights:
The Tenth Persecution
Imperial Whore

Rating: 52%

Ossuaire - Le Troubadour Necrophageophile DEMO [2005]

It's not everyday that you unearth French death metal - in fact my knowledge of the genre's existence in France doesn't go too far beyond Massacra - since France's 21st century output has been marked by a colossal weaving of uncanny black metal acts more than anything else, but find you may, and trust in Ossuaire we do. This triad had independently released a debut back in 2010 (back when bare bones old school death metal revivalism was still fairly popular) but naturally it passed almost unnoticed. But before even that, they actually had a demo, buried under the nether of lost OSDM recordings, and I had the chance to uproot it. The funny thing about it is that while wildly falling to the thrill of their salacious fantasies in a rather funny way, the trio manages to cultivate a death metal sound that doesn't serve as an immediate carbon-copy of any other niche I can name; a strangely proficient brew of Bolt Thrower, Death and Finnish obscurity a la Demigod, Convulse and Depravity.

So let's be straight: this isn't something that will change the fundamentals for death metal, far from it. Through unwavering research and quests into the obscene, I've been thankfully able to discover some real 'game-changers' in the field, even at a time where the glorious pungency of Autopsy and the force-fed awesomeness of the Swedish chainsaw have expired; Ossuaire's queer little demo basically draws upon the Bolt Thrower of 1988-1992 and Finnish putrescence, not as a contender for reinventing the wheel, but as a tasty reminder of some of the ugliest records of the 90's. The tone and production on this demo is fairly outstanding because they've managed to captivate the fuzzed-out soniscape of the early 90's, but beyond that the riffs are anything if not old school, huge, cantankerous bulks of disgusting rhythms and chug fests driven with the prosaic blasting of the drums. It doesn't knock you right across the park, but it's filthy and titular enough to enjoy the sight of dislocated bones while reveling in bowels and grime. Ossuaire take paunchy sound from the American scene as well. ''Le Fleau'' is overflowing with thrashy sways and hypnotizing tremolos redolent of Immolation, Cannibal Corpse and even Morbid Angel, and unlike Bolt Thrower, they don't always stick to being 'slow', since the demo is speed-wise (and aesthetic-wise) not very far from ''Eaten Back To Life'' or something of that vein.

The Finnish influence is buried between the less noticeable tremolo patterns, like in ''Necrofistum Prima Nocte'' where they extricate a gruesome, sinister aura, though I wouldn't have minded if they had some more substance to them. The vocals aren't really too distinguished here, but if you're into the kind of timber championed by Craig Pillard or Karl Willets, they should fit your bill. The lyrics are all in French, so it's an odd delight to be hearing the same tales of gore and bloody requital sang in the language renowned for its posh extravagance. This is 'posh' death metal, and haters can fuck off. But that aside, this is hardly an introspective brand of music (in case the cover art didn't do the work) with implications that don't go far beyond your 'stock' old school death metal offering, and while it would be interesting to hear what the Frenchmen would sound like if they got on a level with, say, Trbiulation or Putrevore, the demo is solid a piece of work, but nothing I'll be listening to consistently.

Highlights:
Le Fleau


Rating: 63%

Skelethal - Deathmanicvs Revelation [2014] (EP)

As a duo who had previously contributed to the retro-thrash French obscure Infinite Translation, naturally I wasn't too enthralled to see Jon Whiplash and Gui Haunting performing in their revivalist schemes in the field of death metal with Skelethal. Now let's be clear here, folks. There's really very little to get excited about the ''Deathmanicvs Revelation'' EP that these two Frenchmen put out unless you're constantly in the mood to try out recycled riffs after recycled riffs from the 90's, pertaining to Entombed and Dismember in the highest degree possible. It's annoying enough the sound on many Swedeath revitalization attempts are so compressed and paper-thin in actual originality, but the matter doubles in banality when entire throngs of bands can't seem to free themselves of the verbosity of this situation. Not that Skelethal's capability lies solely in dialing back to '89-'93 - the Frenchmen have got more juice than a good few of their fellow aping machines - but even if the 22 minutes they presented was vigorous enough, I could never stop thinking how confined these younglings were to their style.

What I'm talking about here is, of course, loud bantering guitars with the atypical Swedish death metal toning, raw, fermenting and persistently dismissive of an eclectic listener's attempt to carve out more refined sounds; and one cannot forget the vocals either, which were, I'm afraid, by no stretch of the imagination particularly evocative in its pestering attempt to provoke horror and living fear. I suppose Skelethal channels back to the demo-stages of Grave, Entombed, Unleashed and Dismember (Nihilist, if you will), because they crave a thinner and more metallic abstraction of the guitars some of their counterparts, and I some of thrashy directions which the duo exhibited with their side project Infinite Translation certainly rubbed off on their death metal chord-playing, as the title track abundantly displayed. However, despite all my carping with the lack of innovation most of the guitar riffs and drum patterns, it goes without saying I felt a mild craving for the furious tempo and pacy edginess the Frenchmen created, and I even felt they were flirting with Napalm Death or Terrorizer on the unbridled ''Curse of the Neverending''.

Yet, for the sheer bliss of razing, chainsaw-ripping death metal out here, Skelethal doesn't have much to offer besides a few cans of grossly brewed beer. The sense of the necessity to break through and ponder a more intricately layered, worthwhile sounds shines through ''Death Returns''; it's pretty obvious that even these guys aren't really having an extremely fun time playing the stuff that's been blistering ears and headphones alike for over 20 years - but their failure at circumvention is inevitable. Thankfully, the atmospheric aspects of the EP weren't imposed with the mephetic dullness of a lot of bands in the same market, because the production was rather crisp, raw, and gave in for plenty of breathing space in the end. ''A Violation of Something Sacred'' was probably the band's dabble with death n' roll, and not a bad one, at that, but I felt the product was all the same. There might have been a moment or two here that the guitar actually stood out with sufficient memorability, but that's it... I won't demean the Frenchmen at such a preliminary effort - there have, after all, been copious bands before who took years to properly refine themselves - but let's just hope that the pastiche and creativity of the riffing is enlarged with future recordings. Till then, drink beer and hail death.

Highlights:
Putrefaction
Deathmanicvs Revelation

Rating: 68%

Spektr - Cypher [2013]

As much as I love groups like Bastard Sapling, who can instantly rumble into nostalgic, atmospheric haze, groups that seem as if they were bred from acts such as Blut Aus Nord, or Deathspell Omega have a special, assorted appeal to me. France's Spektr is no outsider to the aesthetics of Reverence, CCSABA and the like; in fact, they have over a decade of professionalism behind them along with two more albums at their belts, making them one of the more preferable acts in the recent surge of industrialized ambient black metal manifestations, and certainly one of the more inventive ones too, forming a strident, dissonant balance between your standard drowning black metal tremolo waves and Godflesh, all the while bringing forth a wealth of ambient sound tracks that literally form about half the album. You can already guess what sort of disturbances you're to encounter on your 45 minute journey, a nightmarish apocalypse of discordance pulsing against your ears, lost in a pitch-black gorge.

Alright, I'll admit, despite incorporating such a mass of influences from acknowledged connoisseurs of discordant mourn and turbulence, Spektr are hardly at their tumultuous paramount. The ambient passages and samples that excessively adorn the record are certainly amazing exhibitions of modern macabre, but the riffs themselves are mostly bathed in chock loads of reverb, chorus flange, tape echo and phaser, which lead down to the same dissonant pathway, and they don't particularly feel inaccessible, and actually quite entertaining considering their basis is a simple Norwegian inflection from the mid 90's. The lack of vocals also provide with a mysterious, ominous overtone here, and to be fair all the instruments are an equally important part of the gear-system, and the record itself should be regarded as a gestalt, too, not simultaneous clash of subterranean clangor. While I enjoyed the majority of the ebbing tremolo barrages, the haunting feel of the guitars which sometime took trudging, droning heights in pace and the band's tendency of spontaneity, inserting samples and riffs completely at random and thus creating an aerial complex of capriciousness, I can't deny that the band did an excellent job in building up a dozen of blood-curdling ambient samples.

Only, the number of samples butting into the actual material actually cut off a lot of the real action taking place. Sure, going by their book, moments of such harrowing drudge is only common, but I felt the Frenchman were spending too much time building up for climaxes for the riffs when they should have spent some more time engrossing the substance and not the decoration. The title track, despite being the longest remains my favorite, so filled with captivation that the band at some point gave into straightforward, semi-industrial black/thrash attacks, and there were even  moments when samples and riffs coexisted, leading to the ultimate, obfuscated assembly that I believe that band tried so hard to achieve throughout. I think I might have heard a few gaseous gnarls along the way, though they could have been just pieces of the samples, but still, the band could have accomplished even more if they stuffed in a few dreary growls here and there. ''Cypher'' still remains a prehensile album, a homage to modern Blut Aus Nord, CCSABA and Godflesh, and certainly a very strong album in its own rights. You won't be entirely engrossed, I can assure you that, but more than a couple of spins won't prove to be very healthy for your sanity, either.

Highlights:
Teratology 
Cypher
Antimatter

Rating: 84%

Ysengrin - To Endotaton

To me, the number of French bands that I have relative reverence for is very, very few. Even considering all the bands from the dawn of time as far as metal is concerned, there were only a couple of acts which were able to capture my attention, including the death/thrash massacre Massacra, and few more similar OSDM groups which proved somewhat emergent only during the early 90's, and other than that handful of crude extremes, there's only the current blossoming post/ambient black metal chorus that I eschew from listening, but had a sort of alarming impact on me. With members from the fascinating atmospheric black metal cogitation Darkenhold, Ysengrin, one of my more latter discoveries, completely varying from the fellow countrymen, have injected an addicting hermetic drug into my veins which I can't seem to cleanse myself of; the group formulates a mercurial enigma of death, black and doom, and even more surprising is that they don't deliberately eschew whatever archaic tendencies these three genres have, and throw them into their own, enigmatic concoction which boasts of some of the most refreshing, somber metal I've heard in a long while.

From the very start, ''To Endotaton'' constantly fabricates, intense, almost delusional majestic blackened death/doom, if you want to classify that simply. The entire album is a single, cavernous forty-minute journey into mysterious and occult harmony, the album's innumerable characteristics showing with color and epitomized pulchritude, and this constantly flowing tree of veins always keeps ample provisions of atmospheric deepness, adding a mesmerizing undertone to its eloquent furnace, burning with a calm but fervent fire. Eventually, due to the album's many faces, there will be many who will dub it something else, since, the listener is inflected by whatever attribute has an impact on him/her the most, but as a whole, ''To Endotaton'' incorporates so many different influences of distinct color and variation, that its spectrum eventually bursts and comes out a new, fresh monolith formed of the beautifully charred remains of its predecessors.

I'm glad the album eschews any sort of industrial/technical element that might come to mind, because such an experiment would have surely ruined the organic trance bestowed upon you that I drool so much about. The primary riffs are stationary black/doom progressions, advancing, sometimes, with a great atmospheric splendor, while sometimes simply punishing with  a more swerving complex: dirtier chugs and crispy patterns.  While a surge of mournful, misanthropic riffage struggles through a dense plume of lethargy and desolation, Ysengrin add plenty of revitalizing objects in between mourns to keep the pace active, and somehow fluent. I'm talking about crunchy thrash chugs and Bolt Thrower-esque mid-paced crushers coming in an eerie stampede, and on even rarer occasions you'll hear deliberate tremolo bashing, churning into the semi-epic aura with ease.

While the cavern-riddled utters of the vocalist will often be excluded from significance during the more rapid incursions, the tinging despair of the vocalists light gutturals will probably ignite fires of gripping tension and isolation in clean guitar- dominated sequences, where the Frenchman will present themselves as virtuoso of the dark Spanish lead guitar or simply haunting interludes. No matter how long the entire song is, through the band members' experience and savvy techniques, the tremendous hermetic strength the album holds, and delicately penned compositions, the entrancing archaic mystery that is ''To Endotaton'' exceeds. A highly, highly recommended aperture into morbid darkness. Good job I, Voidhanger, good job.

Highlight:
To Endotaton 

Rating: 90%