Croire, décroître

Croire, décroître is the greatest album I own.

The album starts off vicious and it wastes no time with an introduction track. It doesn't expose you to grandiose strings or keys. This is concentrated "brutal" black metal. There is something deliberately eviscerating about the production, as everything manages to build up instantly without crude, unsavory elements crammed into a collateral mess. The mixing is done JUST right, even at the most dense parts. Intensity is Croire, Décroître, for the album practically never slows down and will constantly keep punishing you over and over until you've been exhausted. The guitars, drums, and bass all have great mixing to bring to the table. The guitar tone is bright, fiery, and mid-filled with a low tuning. The drums have a sound similar to other Vladimir projects but are less complex. They, here, support the other instruments directly instead of occasionally showing them up with inhuman blast beats and supernatural fills. The bass works with the guitars and drums in a way one could describe as consensual cooperation instead of a rival bout, unlike previous material.

Vladimir rages, his voice cracking and pitching with authority. He manages to convey a commandment with every sentence, like he's channeling all of his concurrent pain and communicating it with you. During his first few outings under his myriad of one-man-bands, Vladimir had an untrained charm to his vocals. Watching them evolve into an actually threatening cadence is fascinating and a sign of how much he puts into the narrator-aspect of music. Now, there are some vocalists whom are deeper, lighter, higher, more graveling, less formulaic, more interesting - but the man deserves praise for his utter dedication to consistency if nothing else. He has the gurgle, the rasp, the bellowing, and the punch.

The album production is in the realm of one that gets your attention immediately. It is quite like that sense you get when you've stumbled upon your first real introduction onto a truly heavy genre composer. Like, for instance, Yob, Smoke Rites, Portal, Svart Crown, Vesania, or any other visceral bands that are paraded and/or featured on the tongues or blogposts of metalheads. It's trying to really teach you that there is a level of abstraction beyond simple words and the attempt to formulate them into audible expressions is an impossible, futile gesture. Now, not to say that it is impossible to describe, but everyone will have their slightly diverged interpretation of what exactly you mean by 'unholy' sounding.

Everything here flows together so well that its actually quite hard to tear apart the whole package track for track. "Innocence Abusée" opens with a torrential combo of guitars and drums and contains some of the best music on the track-list. Songs that highlight the bass have to be almost every track, with special attention paid to bass lines on "D'élégance et De Déréliction". Speaking of more primal sounds, the kit-programming skills that Vladimir has refined are truly awesome when compared to the average digitally produced drums. The specific sound that they emit are rich and punchy, and 'organic' enough to fool some novice listeners. Other earlier releases by the man have had the drums overproduced or simply too mechanically driven. With that said, they were never placed poorly.

"Les Pucerons De L'écorce Divine" is a track worthy of highlight (they all are) for it's incredible flow and consistent, excellent construction. The song begins with repetitive, sinister strumming and tremolo picking throughout the entire runtime. There isn't too much diversity here on purpose, because like a lot of orthodoxy bands, the soundscape is intentionally samey. Liken it to riding in a car on a highway with a scenic vista in the background while you feel the ebbs and flows of the wind. The occasional jolts from cracks in the tire-burned asphalt remind you that you are in a metal coffin, traveling at lethal speeds across burning, pitched, chemically composed Earth waiting to peel the flesh from your bones if you fell away. The song trawls to the ending with the guitars riling up the cathartic bass rides - with all the instruments ghoulishly lounging now - to allow room for each audio-machine to shine with equal luminosity. Before the last fifty seconds of the track, the instruments return to the combined intensity they formed at the onset of the track. An impending doom of a cut, surely.

"Le Poids De Leur Chute Les Rend Dignes" is the impending doom, and the last I'll highlight. Fast strumming and tremolo initiates the track, with Vladimir groaning and howling. This is a real cacophony of sound already, a sign of the anger embedded. With the intensity so high out of the gate, a not-so-hidden surprise awaits and the song builds. For a few seconds before the turn it relishes in a comparatively clear oration backed by a viper-like guitar interlude. Then, as expected from the buildup, Vladimir unleashes thrashes with the lowest-fret chugs he can manage. They are so vile, so darkened and hateful, it chills bones to the marrow. This sends the genre from black to brutal black death with surprising taste and ease. Unfortunately, the sheer brutality only lasts for roughly a full minute of the entire track. This monster ends rather typically for the album, but not without giving us an excellent, similar conclusion.

There is a finishing track, but that's an ending reserved for a full listen. Regardless, nine songs with this much packed into it can become rather intimidating for a first-time listen. This is an abominable release. It is nearly uncontested by all except for a handful. I do hope Vladimir releases more music under Unholy Matrimony, because as it stands, I rarely ever experience albums like this.

My favorite tracks:
- "Innocence Abusée"
- "Les Pucerons De L'écorce Divine"
- "Le Poids De Leur Chute Les Rend Dignes"

My disliked tracks:
None.

Crushing. Relentless. Vexatious. Excruciating. These are a few words that come to mind when I think of Vladimir Cochet’s return under the Unholy Matrimony name. Croire, Décroître is not an album to be taken lightly. It requires the listener’s full, undivided attention as not to miss every subtle nuance, every hidden touch, and the sheer brilliance that is packed into the fifty-seven minutes on this disk. Six years, and three albums under different projects later, Croire, Décroître is a radical change in style from the previous Love and Death, and Misologie. Gone is the mediocre production of days past, gone is the abuse of inhuman drum programming. Everything here seems organic, almost natural, as if this musical style was created by simply being. Bred by aural microorganisms, it has always been, and always will be.

Commenting on each track individually is a waste, given the eight songs presented here flow so fluidly. The fundamentals that Croire, Décroître were built on have been reinvented, giving a brand new meaning to the term “music as art.” The guitars have that signature Cochet style, but played in an unorthodox fashion. There is more focus on melody where melody should not be. The tracks Innocence Abusée, D’Élégance et de Déréliction, Les Pucerons de l’Écorce Divine, Le Glaive contre Le Rêve, and Le Poids de leur Chute les Rend Dignes all have such harmonic displacement, uniting to create a funereal dirge. With clean-sung choruses backing the immaculate tone of the guitar in the track Poids de leur Chute les Rend Dignes, and the iniquitous, malicious guttural growls in Le Glaive contre Le Rêve, it will surely invoke chills down the listener’s spine, leaving them speechless.

One aspect of this release which may come as a shock is the forefront presence of bass, coming in at two frequencies as opposed to a singular backing roar. The bass lines are quite subtle, never really straying from the lead guitar, but when they assert their presence, it’s a treat to behold. The tracks Les Pucerons de l’Écorce Divine and La Lente Mort sans Panache display just how much of a dramatic effect the bass really has on this album. Creating a deep, bellowing roar behind the drums, and a static frequency alongside the guitars, both the low and high ends assault the listener, never relenting.

Normally, Vladimir Cochet takes much advantage of his drum machine by implementing elongated sections of hyperfast blast beats and cymbal crashes. This has also been changed to affect the overall tempo of the album, which sometimes borders on doom metal. Everything regarding the drums has been significantly simplified, with limited fills, and extremely limited blast beats. This sounds like a negative aspect, but in reality, it is done in such a tactful manner by which it contributes more to the atmosphere of the tracks. The tonality of the drum machine, however, has almost a hollow ring with every strike. It resonates, coupled with the stainless tone of the lead guitar, conjures a dissonant, abysmal atmosphere.

The clarion call of Croire, Décroître lies in the track Le Glaive contre Le Rêve. For those who don’t speak French, an excerpt of the translated lyrics from the aforementioned track. Essentially, this one track speaks for everything Croire, Décroître represents.

“Who believes, decreases.
Who knows, is.
The sub-humans perish,
And man will live.”

In conclusion, those who are weak of mind should not listen. It takes preparation for the mental assault that is Croire, Décroître. Those who don’t speak French can use an online translator for the lyrics, and correct the grammatical mistakes at their own will, for fear of having every thought and idea they once held dear, shattered. This is beyond art or philosophy. This is intellectual terrorism at its finest.

The last Vladimir Cochet project (which features metal music) that I haven’t checked out, Unholy Matrimony. This project of his features black metal, done in a brutal yet atmospheric way, and you might say the same on this album. So far (as of August 2010), this has been the last metal full-length released by Vladimir Cochet. Well, let’s have a better look here!

Like the previous Unholy Matrimony album, this album is entirely sung (or should I say rasped) in French, which could be a problem if you aren’t used to such. Once again, we have the drum programming at a realistically fast speed. The execution of the instruments is, as always, top-notch, although the raspy vocals for me are just all right. The music still is atmospheric but noticeably brutal. One obvious change here though, is the production quality, wherein you hear the drums louder than ever and the bass more audible, and both of these changes made the album sound like modern black metal. Awesome…!

What I like about this release is that it has a good sense of direction without all the songs sounding like each other. “Croire, Décroître” is one album that sounds outright brutal without sounding like senseless, trashy noise. Some songs here features more atmosphere (“Les Pucerons de l’Écorce Divine”), brutality a la death metal, (“Innoncence abusée”), diversity (“La Lente Mort sans Panache”, where you hear a ukulele-sounding instrument throughout the song) and uniqueness (“Tu ne Croiras pas”).

The only real problem that this change of production gave to us is that it doesn’t really suit the band’s sound that much. You’ll hear that the blast beats reduces the audibility of the riffs played here. Another thing is that the death metal brutality doesn’t suit the songs too much, primarily because the album plays black metal music. Nevertheless, the diversity this album has will make you like it. Well now, I think I could say that the third time still is a charm!

Originally made for http://mystifymyserie.blogspot.com

Switzerland has had a unique habit of breeding the most outlandishly free-spirited of extreme metal bands, going all the way back to one of the style’s original founders Hellhammer, all the way forward to obscure bands melding grim and vile musical constructs with Industrial elements such as the short lived side-project of Morgul’s principle member Jack D. Ripper in Meridian. But even amongst such auspicious company, Vladimir Cochet’s projects have all stood out for their odd marriages of dark and complex atmospheres and wildly existential lyrics. Unholy Matrimony essentially functions as his project for putting forth his most progressive works, with a blatant disregard for playability that no doubt comes with composing music solely for the studio.

The general consensus amongst purists is that anyone dabbling in both black metal and progressive metal simultaneously will ultimately end up sounding like Ihsahn, but that doesn’t really hold up here. There is maybe a very distant relation in the through-composed nature of these songs with some of Emperor’s “Anthems To The Welkin At Dusk”, minus the keyboards and the pomp, and with a much more dissonant character. The production practices here also largely tend away from the frostbitten Nordic character associated with the seemingly endless slew of 2nd wave emulators out there, almost taking on a sort of modern, down-tuned character that comes off closer to what Arsis or some other technical melodic death metal band might come up with.

From start to finish, this listens more like a collection of 8 experimental compositions than a group of songs in the expected sense. Identifying each is possible through a couple of familiar, almost chorus-like sections, while recalling any of them is essentially impossible amidst the mountain of differing musical ideas. Hearing where one slew of tremolo picked riffs ends the 2nd song “Rictus de Mort et de Larmes” and bleeds into an equally crazy yet different group, beginning immediately after to kick off “D’Élégance Et De Déréliction” is just one of a series of quirks in this album that almost make it listen like a concept album or even a single, 57 minute composition loaded with enough guitar riffs to rival Dark Angel. Add to that an array of seemingly random acoustic passages and a few occasional stoner/doom moments like the intro to “Le Glaive Contre Le Rêve” and any question of this project having an identity of its own become laughable.

Vladimir’s approach, though definitely flirting with Dream Theater territory in terms of song structure ambitions, remains pretty consistent style wise and tends to do his best work with longer time lengths. “D’Élégance Et De Déréliction” and “Les Pucerons De l’Écorce Divine” both take some ideas that could almost qualify as middle era Immortal worship (think “Battles In The North” and “Blizzard Beasts”) and elaborates the hell out of them until they very loosely resemble anything connected with early to mid 90s black metal. The former is a bit more adventurous in the song structure department, while the latter sticks a bit closer to the modified Nordic model, deviating away from an album that is largely death metal influenced and giving off an aura of classic, grim and frostbitten coldness.

Generally speaking, this is a solid album that illustrates how radically different in character this genre can sound when it is given a hi-fi production, as opposed to the older, uglier, analogy-like character of Darkthrone and early Saytricon. Those who are predisposed to liking the latter character of sound might not go for it on those grounds alone, but among the newer releases in this style, it may win over a few in its unique method of straddling the extremes of either forgetting where black metal came from, and dwelling up on it to the point of turning it into a tired display of slavish orthodoxy.

Originally submitted to (www.metal-observer.com) on November 15, 2009.