Fugue

The phrase 'criminally underrated' is a cliche all too fit for Paris' Moonreich, a black metal band with such a capacity for delivering a 'total package' of well-written, well-produced, interesting, and re-listenable music, that is simultaneously capable of actually sending a shiver up your spine with a particular riff, or surprising you with a choice they make somewhere in one of their generally 6-10 minute compositions. As a slightly jaded, 40-something listener of the genre as a whole, I can tell you that this is not something which happens on a regular basis, and as much as I sang the praises of the group's prior effort Pillar of Detest back in 2015, these shadowy individuals have struck yet again with what is handily one of the better black metal efforts I've yet heard this year.

They waste absolutely no time proving themselves, with a delicious, driven, riff-packed opener in "Fugue Part 1: Every Time She Passes Away" which should satisfy a modernist black metal audience's craving for blasting footwork, volatile guitar progressions and tempo shifts between the traditional charging melodies and a more mid-paced, dissonant groove. The song even breaks into a near-tranquil passage of cleaner guitars near its mid-point, and proves a good qualifier for the range you're going to get throughout the album as a whole. It's also an exhibition of what is the most huge and 'accessible' studio production the group has yet achieved...perhaps not quite as absorbing for me as the more haunted Pillar of Detest, but certainly the most likely to pique the interest of those into modern black/death metal mixes liked you'd find on records by bands like Behemoth. The rhythm section is a virtual storm of energy, the bleeding tremolo picked guitar lines bright and sharp, and the vocals front and center, as they rasp and growl over the aggressive tectonics below.

While this album is stylistically consistent, it retains the band's general unpredictability. Overall, it seems like there is a lot of progressive rock or metal influence through some of the guitars, constantly merged to the faster drums or fits of intensity that break out all over the track list. But the two are so neatly intertwined together that they lack any sort of disparity or unpleasant contrast, it simply feels like these things have always been intrinsically linked. Atmospheres throughout are achieved solely through the guitars, without need for flighty orchestration or synthesized bombast...walls of spacious noise provide a backdrop when the band isn't bulldozing forward, and while the blackened extremity at the core of this experience is a constant, there's just no guessing exactly what is going to happen. I thought Moonreich really excelled here with the monolithic, middle-paced, lurching, dissonant rhythms in tracks like "With Open Throat for Way Too Long", or the thrilling "Heart Symbolism", melded seamlessly to the unforgiving blast beats, and with atonal, interesting notes flung all over the grooves to keep them compelling and not just banal mosh material.

But if you want something a little more patient, there's the incredible "Rarefaction" with its thick bass lines, hideous and evil harmonies, perhaps my single favorite cut on the whole disc, although it's hard to choose when they're just so on-fire. At points this album even has the potential to appeal beyond the black metal crowd into fans of progressive, heavier sludge, or dissonant metallic post-hardcore, sort of in the way Mörk Gryning's excellent, underrated, eponymous 2005 'swan song' came across; the riff selections are just that massive and open-minded, without betraying the band's blacker roots. Not every string of notes here is very memorable, but in terms of structure and balance this is just an expert exercise, with some killer lyrics to boot, and very cool Digibook packaging through Les Acteurs de l'Ombre Productions. Mildly less atmospheric than Pillar of Detest, and I might rate that album just a small fraction ahead of this one, but so much of that has to do with the production, which will appeal to some more than others. Fugue is straight to the face, high level French black metal that is well deserving of a nod alongside contemporaries Merrimack or Blut Aus Nord, and surely superior to a lot of the bigger name genre bands releasing records this year.

-autothrall
http://www.fromthedustreturned.com

Dissociative fugue is a slowly reversible amnesia of one’s own identity, a lapse of self that comes from separation and trauma that can become perpetual without professional guidance. Before cognitive behavioral therapy was widely used as treatment, patients afflicted with this rare disorder would be sedated heavily and interviewed intensively for hours. It isn’t much more than a greater distressed version of waking up away from home when on a trip and briefly forgetting where you are. Although Parisian black metal musician Weddir pulls a lot of influence from classic Scandinavian black metal and shifts Moonreich‘s line-up every few years, each of the project’s four full-lengths carry a distinct thread of identity from ‘Loi Martiale’ in 2011 to their latest ‘Fugue’.

Active since 2008 Moonreich play a semi-melodic form of black metal that began resembling post-millennium Marduk and evolved towards their own unique and somewhat accessible sound with each release since. Some smaller stylistic similarities to bands like Aldaaron, Dødsfall and Enthroned exist but these are largely incidental melodic comparisons and don’t account for the modern progressive metal influences and generally accessible verve of Moonreich‘s releases since ‘Terribilis Est Locus Iste’. With his third album ‘Pillars of Detest’ (2015) Weddir almost exclusively employed studio musicians and his greater vision explored increasingly unique avenues within black metal; For ‘Fugue’ his exploration threatens to escape black metal’s stifling orthodoxy entirely with even broader, bolder strokes outside the lines.

The glowering martial influences of Moonreich‘s earliest releases still act as a black hole to dissolve into between extensive atmospheric sections; “Fugue Part II: Everytime the Earth Slips Away” is one of the more extensive and emotive performances on ‘Fugue’ and the listener is given some great reprieve with the twisted riffs and blasts of “With Open Throat For Too Long”. Though composition and modern precision are the pillars of today’s Moonreich, none of it would work as well without some greater sense of balance in the track list. Overwhelming and occasionally cruelly sterilizing, the post-‘Panzer Division Marduk’ blast still steers the boat no matter what dynamic motion the ocean churns with but at no point is ‘Fugue’ a bland wall of noise.

“Heart Symbolism” is perhaps the most accessible track of the bunch with it’s mix of memorable melodic lead guitars and groaning Forgotten Tomb-like swells. Though these moments are pushed along by urgent drumming and a myriad of guitar ideas a lot of ‘Fugue’ feels trapped between a need to explore melodic metal ideas and a duty to create brutal black metal. Because the style expressed reads somewhere between expressive extreme metal (Misanthrope) and alternative metal (Gojira) I found myself zoning out when the more chuggy, simpler sections began to become more frequent and the melodic songwriting lost direction. None of this really becomes an issue until the final two tracks of the release, so even if I have some small amount of conflicting feelings they don’t distract from the majority of the experience.

With only some small caveat do I recommend Moonreich‘s latest. If you haven’t followed the band since ‘Loi Martiale’ then ‘Fugue’ will sound like a true modernization of that sound made even more accessible. If you jumped on board in 2015 with ‘Pillars of Detest’ then this will feel like a logical, if not slightly unexpected progression. I find it admirable to hear the project reaching deeper still towards their own sound and finding it the majority of the time, though I do feel it may be time to shed even more of the black flame and further explore this talent for melody, atmosphere, and guitar technique. If you were to preview any two songs from ‘Fugue’ make sure at least one of them is “Heart Symbolism”.

Attribution: https://grizzlybutts.com/2018/06/21/moonreich-fugue-2018-review/