Ordalies

Ha, the unmistakable smell of French medieval black metal, with its cardboard heroism, its alluring melodies, its folk/Renaissance interludes and its invincible castles packed with equally invincible crossbowmen, always ready to shoot down any churl who'll dare to print a dirty foot on the Motherland. In the long wake of Peste Noire’s epigones, which for the most part abandoned the nauseous ideology to only keep the darkly-romanticized Middle-Ages evocation, Véhémence arrived a tad late to the battle, what does not prevent them from having strong arguments to put forward.

Ordalies, their third album and only one I've heard so far, strictly abides to the now well-established canon of the genre. Over a frantic drumming base which sounds directly inspired from their predecessor(s) of Sühnopfer, a raucous black metal minstrel freely develops his long serenades about desperate one-against-a-thousand fights and bewitched barons, alternatively devoting a large part to chanting lead guitars every time he needs to take a break in his recitation. Repetitive, of course it is; you need to occupy the long winter evenings in a freezing castle, after all. Once the main theme is settled, this is usually for a good five minutes or so, but always with enough variations to keep the interest going; the saga evolves, branches, and develops into occasional guitar flourishes, until the bard ‘with the burnt shield’ – au blason brûlé – has well earned... the right to go on with his next tale.

Relying primarily on the pseudo-ancient character of the lead guitar melodies to build the medieval atmosphere, the guys mostly kept the acoustic instruments to a couple of intros and, of course, to the interludes, even if a flute occasionally pops up for a short solo. Still the work in this department has to be emphasised, like with this squeaking cello, of baroque flavour, which can be heard on the second interlude Quand l'hiver viendra and again on the intro of the closer Par le glaive, which is enough to give a distinct personality to the often conventional exercise of the, let's call it ‘soft pause under the old dying tree before the combat resumes’. If you’ve ever spun a record from that school, you perfectly know what I mean.

The opening track is particularly interesting, in the sense the epic factor was set directly to the maximum there, after only a short acoustic preparation. Tale about the smithing of a magic sword, that could be the song Rhapsody would record, in the improbable hypothesis they suddenly decide to turn black metal. Indeed, the perfect ridicule isn't so far, especially with these 'heroic' cleans which constitute a good third of the vocals, reminding more of a drinking tune for the tavern next door than of the glorious anthem it's supposed to be. Yet, that's the true genius – it works; better, it had to be that over-the-top to properly work. Once you're caught into the irrepressible flow, you have no choice but following it up to the concluding guitar solo, regardless of the superior smile on your face – of course you weren’t fooled... or, was it a smile of satisfaction?

Paradoxically that explains why, perhaps, the whole work eventually falls a tad short: after such a wild beginning, some minimum degree of madness was expected to be kept all along, and the following tracks sound largely too wise in comparison, no matter how high the quality remains. Never mind – that's one of the few metal genres France can really be proud of these days, and it seems we can never have enough of those.

Highlights: De feu et d'acier; La divine sorcellerie; Par le glaive.