Inquisiteurs des temps modernes

Some of Québec’s black metal bands are just plain generic and boring, while others are actively irritating and piss the listener off. As a case in point, Pestroyer. This band, whose name is about as stupid and pathetic as they get (mixing the words pest and destroyer together to form a band name is simply not intelligent), produces music which those two words describe perfectly, as the highly useless Inquisiteurs des Temps Modernes so thoughtfully demonstrates.

This demo consists of four tracks averaging around 5 minutes each, and none are good. La Clé du Mal is perhaps the worst offender, since it contains a driving riff which one might think actually sounds good, but then you realize that it’s been blatantly ripped off from Impaled Nazarene’s Something Sinister (off the vastly superior Pro Patria Finlandia). Even the rip-off doesn’t sound as good as the original, and yet it beats everything else the band has written. Again, this is beyond pathetic.

The three other tracks are similar in sound except they contain “original” Pestroyer riffs. That is to say, the music is beyond generic and nothing interesting can be heard. At least with the first track one can play “spot the blatant rip-off”, but here boredom, irritation and frustration are the only things evoked. The music consists of drowned-out drumming of dubious interest, utterly unremarkable riffs played far too repetitively and cheap, annoying vocals. Those vocals are extremely reminiscent of another Québec black metal band that can’t seem to get a good vocalist, Blackwind, although their instrumentals actually have highlights of quality. This demo seems like a distant and very poor attempt at sounding like newer Gorgoroth (I mean King-era, around Ad Majoren Sathanas Gloriam, which was never very good to begin with). If this is indeed the case, the attempt is a complete and utter failure (well, it is anyway).

A short word on the lyrics: they are probably the most unoriginal French trite ever. This reads exactly like Blackwind and Monarque’s usual misanthropic wannabe-evil anti-religious crap, but worse because the band wasn’t even capable of writing new stuff. What the FUCK is the point of starting a band just to sound like a far worse version of every single similar band preceding you?!

Inquisiteurs des Temps Modernes is shit, there’s no going around it. Even when compared to mediocre and unremarkable black metal bands, these guys are worse because they actively suck and plagiarize vastly superior musicians. Do yourself a favour, avoid this pointless crap and perhaps with a bit of luck they’ll disband soon.