Contemplation misanthropique de l'humanité...

Défaillance is yet another depressive/suicidal black metal band which emerged out of the french scene in the past few years. They play in a typical low-key, slow and depressive manner, and these types of bands have been really popular as of late. None of these have, however, been able to capture the true spirit of depressive black metal. Défaillance does what it does very well: good production, very trebly and distorted guitars, desperate screams, good vocals and the whole deal. However, everything is executed in such a calculated and predictable way that it's in one ear and out the other. This album contains only 3 songs, two of which clock in a twelve minutes and the other one being four minutes long, although it's the highlight. Riff-wise, this is straight out of the scandinavian second wave, containing zero originality and/or soul, since we've all heard them countless amounts of times already. The sound of the guitars is exactly like Beatrik. That's saying something, since Beatrik sounds like everyone else. The keyboards sound exactly like what we heard on Burzum's Filosofem. The drums sound exactly like every single black metal recording out there, although I enjoy the fact that there is no blasting. Now on paper, this sounds exciting: depressing black metal guitar tone, burzum-like keyboard, typical drums? The problem is its lack of originality. This album would have been hailed an instant classic had it been released 5 or 10 years ago. However, these days, this sound is very easy to achieve and isn't given much credit, since a lot of bands play in this style. The harsh suicidal genre is performed ways better by acts such as Forgotten Tomb and Malleus Maleficarum just to name a few. Not to mention the songs only have one or two riffs each. It should also be noted that this full-length is only 30 minutes and 58 seconds long, which is 8 seconds longer than the EP they released in 2006. Why release a full-length? So, how will this be remembered? It won't. And if it is, it'll be just another suicidal, misanthropic, slow-paced, repetitive and trebly album trying to recapture the magic once created by individuals such as Kristian "Varg" Vikernes. Hop on the bandwagon!