Extracting Souls

Welcome to Na Dungortheb, the dreadful valley from the J.J.R. Tolkien writings, a place of terror and fear, where only a valiant batch of French death metallers dare to tread. Yep, this isn’t another bombastic black metal ode, like some of you may have thought; the Tolkien lore can also serve as a solid base for an intriguing death metal slab, what do you know?

Indebted to the legacy of the departed Chuck Schuldiner the debut was, a handsome piece of Death art, a both complex and melodic tribute to the great American, the guys adding a couple of more individual strokes of the choppy, less regular variety. The sophomore was a tad more straight-forward, but was based on pretty much the same building blocks, the band not trying to shift too far from the vast Death umbrella.

The album reviewed here follows the same path, the guys making another unmitigated transition from the Death repertoire, although “Inside” is a vintage “Symbolic” leftover, a stylish meandering excursion with hefty progressive overtones. The pace has been decreased compared to the preceding recordings, the band now moshing with a more measured trot, and also with a bigger sense of melody, the leads in particular absolutely spell-binding, tractates on classical Shrapnel lore which overwrite the riffs at times even. There’s a sniff of thrash (“Impact”, “From Memories to Silence”) climbing the deathly walls, accelerating the proceedings whenever the latter aren’t tied in a very intricate knot (“Sad War”, the puzzling creeper “When I Believe I Live”), or don’t brood under the weight of heavy volcanic, also tenebrously atmospheric, arrangements (“Outside”, “Heaven Can Hate”).

Tolkien and Schuldiner should be proud of their followers, the ones here in particular, as on the music front they excel with ease, extracting the fans’ souls with both technical and melodic tools. There’s this sophistication applied to the creative process, like the musicians have settled down, know their craft inside/out, and have now embarked on a polishing campaign, smoothing out whatever edges have been sticking out earlier. Not too many of the kind, truth be told, the band were doing an excellent job from the beginning, and continue to do so. The accentuated shouty death metal vocalist seems to be the least ordinary element here, but strolling through such a valley you can’t expect an angelic maiden’s voice to caress your ear… can you?