Les déclinistes

I'll repeat it until the end of time: Misanthrope could have been – should have been – the undisputed leaders of the French progressive death metal scene, basically filling the throne Gojira is instead sitting on. Then I'll add, over and over again: the unique reason why they actually aren't, why they'll never be, is their unmatchable ability to regularly shoot themselves in the foot. Not even going back to the drama from the early 2000s, which killed their momentum at a time they had all the aces in hand, their last decade only would work as a good illustration. You thought that after their strong 2017 full-length Alpha X Omega and the praise it received, they would keep on writing new songs to confirm they're more relevant than ever? Wrong – suddenly willing to appear like nothing more than a rusty relic from a distant past, all they've produced since sums up to, first, a covers / old songs EP, second, a partial recreation of their turn-of-the-century hit Misanthrope Immortel, last, these Déclinistes which exclusively consist in re-recorded versions of tracks from their early days.

Sure, in the purest Misanthrope tradition, Philippe "SAS de l'Argilière" Courtois can still grace us with a two-pages ramble about, amongst many others, memories of a bygone youth, the 2019 Notre-Dame-de-Paris cathedral fire, or the overall decline of our civilization. With some extra effort, their certainly was a grand apocalyptic album lurking behind... alas, if this apocalyptic album does indeed exist, it's been released a couple of years ago by other French veterans of the scene, that is, the black metallers of Seth, and it's called La Morsure du Christ. But we digress – just like Misanthrope does, indeed. So, to the matter at hand: twelve completely re-recorded songs, following the chronological order of their first release; it starts with Haïsseur de l'Humanité / Hater of Mankind, originally found on the eponymous 1991 old-school death metal split, and ends with Lendemain futile / Futile Future, from 1997 Visionnaire, the album which opened their short era of popularity.

The chief issue with most of these songs is that, composition-wise, they weren't very good to begin with. Poetical mixtures of death metal, progressive metal and unclassifiable experimentations, they betrayed a band which still didn't fully know where it was going –incessant line-up changes making the problem even worse. Only the irrepressible fire of youth could make them live, and yet it was a painful, unhealthy life. Now, when played by seasoned musicians, benefiting from a perfect production where every instrument sounds crystal clear in the mix, their intrinsic weaknesses appear in the crudest light. Not that the guys didn't try their best to heal them, especially by abundantly patching them with additional instrumental parts and acrobatic guitar / bass solos, to the point they regularly end up sounding notably different from their forgotten originals: all this meritorious re-appropriation work still cannot hide the fact several of them were just unsalvageable.

The work with the occasional orchestral, or more generally non-metal parts, has nonetheless to be praised. When, back in the day, the weak production created a patchwork impression every time an unexpected instrument or programmed loop was introduced in the mix, all the tracks now flow much more naturally – a huge improvement no doubt. To this respect, emblematic is the saxophone on Regard vers l'infini / Standing at the Galaxy, perhaps their weirdest experimentation ever; not only did they keep it, but they also added an opening solo, performed by a real musician while the original was most likely sampled. Absurd... and genius, together. Further, the novel instrumental intro written for Lendemain futile, carried by an ethereal keyboard, works noticeably better than the dull low-volume opening from the original, while in an opposite move they chose to tone down most of the keyboards from Déclin gargantuesque / Gargantuan Decline to create a more aggressive output. A few selected examples which should be enough to prove the exercise, to who already knows the band well, isn't without its interest: still it remains little more than that – a mere exercise.

Then comes the problem of the French lyrics. It's certainly not anecdotal, as it sums up all the Misanthrope philosophy of these last years, that is, we're the last independent French metal band, the survivors, the proud weavers of the royal fleur-de-lys - fleur-de-lys obviously invading the back cover of the album, what did you expect. Perhaps... but those lyrics were originally written in English, elaborated in English, and their often literal French translation sounds forced, the exact same way their later songs first written in French do in their alternative English versions. The once powerful chorus from 1666... Theatre Bizarre especially suffers: built on a complex game of alliterations and a hammering 5 + 5 syllables rhythm, its structure is nearly destroyed by French verses a couple of syllables longer. Similarly, the chorus of Lendemain futile loses all the impact of the original Futile Future, which was exclusively based on the similarity between these two words, underlined by a strange echo. This is all the more incomprehensible than simply calling the French version Futur futile would have been grammatically correct, while retaining the original alliteration...

... but you know... that's Misanthrope. And that should be enough to remind anyone common sense cannot totally apply there.