À travers les lambeaux

The debut album of Canadian black-death-doom metallers Shezmu is here, promising brooding violence and captivating extremity.

Visceral riffs grind into a furious discordant array with pummelling drums. Spectral and bleak, with relentless malevolent energies, it takes seconds to realise just how grisly this record will be. The vocalist joins with guttural howls and adds more monstrosities to the expansive instrumental dreariness, encompassing all things extreme metal with the unhinged assaults. As we venture further into the album, it grows in a sickeningly twisted, warping fashion to disperse any light energies. The monolithic doom metal sections add atmospherics and groove to a discordant and eerie blend of blackened death metal to give us a vanquishing, mighty and gloriously evil soundscape. Contradicting this is some amazing classic guitar and tribal percussion to further the ritualistic feeling of the record while building even more tension towards the extreme metal destruction ahead.

Packed with creepily experimental and unorthodox songwriting and structures, Shezmu conjure up some ghastly musical concoctions to permeate the darkest realms of heavy metal. Cavernous and vicious guitars are carefully layered over thunderous drums and bass, filling every second with masterfully malignant music for the vocalist to howl maniacally to. With a strong vision and otherworldly approach, this is truly impeccable extreme metal that feels dangerous and at the same time like every single element, nuance and break has been thoroughly and finely put together with utmost care. This music will devour and irradiate anything in its obliterating pathway to carnage.

Amidst the hypnotic ambience we occasionally are just dropped into war metal style battery which together with the aforementioned doomy sections and more twisted ideas further adds a sense of unbalance and volatility to the onslaught. Drawing on more devilish energies, each piece ruptures the sound barrier with malice and perpetually dark soundscapes of pure disdain. With no remorse, the songs collide in spectacular fashion to conjure a storm of total chaos and hellish brutality. Although chaotic, there is a precision that drives the ferocity of the music incredibly hard into the brain, giving an inescapable and claustrophobic adrenaline to the musical excellence.

Truly an astounding debut album with every single element working beautifully to complement the last, delving into some of the more wonderfully malicious extreme metal realms one could hope for. A completely unhinged, unpredictable and unique slab of fantastically dense extreme metal that tortures the soul with its delightfully demonic apparitions.

Written for www.nattskog.wordpress.com

Krucyator Productions are back with another sick release. This time label boss Loic has signed a band from Quebec/Canada, and anybody being familiar with some of the bands from this area might have a feeling what to expect. Often you get a certain level of grittiness combined with some nice technical playing and a few more unorthodox ideas, and this is something which could be said about “A travers les lambeaux” as well. Shezmu turned a few heads with their EPs, but here on their debut full length they finally show their full potential.

Dense, destructive, and domineering, their music seems to be the stuff of a dark and necromantic ritual, a form of arcane pitch-black incantation which draws its sinister energies from the shedding of blood on a massive scale. The main ingredients of this unholy cocktail have been taken from the death metal pool, with the hypnotic and stoic guitar chords sawing their way into the listener’s cerebellum. Some impressive soloing is used for creating a certain feeling of chaos, but this is far from technical death metal. Flickering guitar leads add a feeling of lunatic zealotry to this vaulting assault on the senses. The tracks flow into each other, and while there is nothing too catchy of hooky the listening experience is a fascinating one.

The vocals in particular are blood-freezing, sepulchral and cavernous in their tone, and the music channels the sensation of descending into a gaping, lightless maw of death with no end. This album is infiltrated with the febrile and spectral emanations of eerie harmonies that add further dimensions to the horror, and there are some variations in the drumming as well. Some blackish elements and disturbing audio effects are used to help ramping up the atmosphere even more, as well as some doomy passages finding their way into the mix. Some lighter pieces presenting acoustic and instrumental interludes have also been woven into the overall picture, lending the album additional layers.

The production is rotten and dirty, yet powerful and diversified. The direct approach of the mixing underlines the impression that “A travers les lambeaux” can be viewed as classic and occult death metal in the vein of such bands as e.g. Grave Miasma, although Shezmu try their best to separate themselves from the pack. The album is pretty short, clocking in just above the 30 minutes mark, but to fully appreciate the experience consecutive listens might be necessary anyway. All in all this is a very interesting piece of dark and obscure music, and while maybe not for everyone fans of the genre need to check this one out.

The first proper album for Shezmu after a bunch of extended plays and demos, À travers les lambeaux (could be translated to “through the shreds”) is a blistering piece of occult death metal that will help you get through this summer if your main vice is listening to hellishly dark music. Their first release as a three piece since the arrival of Yannick as a full time bassist, the short but sweet album doesn’t mess around with any aspects of their identity.

With their inspirations fully assimilated and ready to torn apart the competition, Shezmu delivers a well written and intelligent record full of twists and turns. Without playing a fully epic blend of metals similar to what bands like Sarpanitum or Necros Christos do, the Montreal band prefers to focus on pure death metal while incorporating some slightly foreign touches. The vocals of axeman and band leader Olivier (also in a wide array of other cool bands like Palmistry, Complot! or Moulin Banal) are deep, thunderous but also tortured clean screams reminiscent of Bolzer. It’s not a technical band, the focus is on riffs and riffs alone, there’s no unnecessary wank, it’s just riff worship and that’s totally fine with me. They’re mixing this sort of subtle antique feel with the evil energy of Incantation and it works. Not totally unlike Dead Congregation did.

The interlude “La rage” divides the album in two with a middle-eastern feel similar to the grandiose instrumental compositions found on Melechesh’s “The Epigenesis” and it was a welcomed respite since Shezmu are so fucking intense. There’s some shorter numbers like “Les secrets des ziggourats” and it brings forth a quasi blackened grind element to the fast compositions. Still, the bulk of the album is the two bread slices around it, its two longer compositions located at the start and at the end. They allow themselves to slow down and pummel you with “Lex Talionis”. At the edge of cavernous death metal, Shezmu’s guitars are pretty clear as far as death metal is concerned. The opener and title track has those hypnotic riffs that almost gives me the same effect (good) stoner metal has on me. This is perhaps their biggest strength, this sort of thundering but controlled chaos handled through efficient but minimalist musicianship is just so good. Shezmu are the cream of the crop for Québec death metal alongside Outre Tombe. Let’s see if Sedimentum can beat ‘em with their upcoming debut album.

Metantoine's Magickal Realm