Praise for Glorior Belli‘s The Great Southern Darkness from San Francisco’s aQuarius Records: We’ve mentioned it before, but it seems like few can touch French black metal when it comes to originally and innovation. Whether it’s the gnarled twisted post rock flecked ritualistic blackness of Deathspell Omega, or the industrial drone drenched black buzz of Blut Aus Nord, and on past records, French horde Glorior Belli seemed to hew close to DSO’s sound, the same sort of mysterious progressive blackness, that was until their 2009 record Meet Us At The Southern Sign, where GB established themselves as perhaps the strangest of the French BM bunch.
Infusing the usual black blasts and grim buzz with all manner of not-specifically-black-metal elements, whether it’s sort of a twangy bit of moody meander, or punkish vocal howls, or some downright nearly blues sounding moments, not to mention a penchant for rocking, and we’re not talking buzzing and blasting, we’re talking rocking as in rock music, like shredding leads, classic (even Southern at moments) ROCK, which was a subtle element way back when, but recently, especially on this new one, has come to play a bigger and bigger part in Glorior Belli’s sound.
In fact much of The Great Southern Darkness is spent rocking and not blasting or buzzing, the opening one two punch of ‘Dark Gnosis’ and ‘Secret Ride To Rebellion’, includes very little of what one might describe as buzzing black metal, instead, there’s lots of midtempo rocking, even some doomy dirgery, with slippery seasick riffage and classic metal melodies.
And then check out ‘They Call Me Black Devil’, which starts off with some Joy Division / Earth like low slung twang, before launching into what sounds like some post metal Neur-Isis-y groove. The harsh demonic vokills, the only thing really defining the song as black metal, and then the track shifts into a killer mathy super melodic breakdown, hell, pretty much any band on Relapse would kill for a part like that, which speaks to how good these guys have gotten musically, as they toss off parts like that constantly, without batting an eye.
And while you’re at it, there’s also ‘Negative Incarnate’, which indeed has an appropriately EVIL title, but is almost total classic rock, complete with super melodic leads, and a groove that won’t quit. But then the second that song ends, comes the band’s harshest blast, the furious opening to ‘Bring Down The Cosmic Scheme’, but that grim buzz doesn’t last long, as the track shifts gears into something totally melodic and totally crazy catchy, lurching back and forth between blackbuzz and melodic blackened rock.
And not to overly stress the lack of actual black metal, the band do offer up plenty of grim blackness, like on the aforementioned track, but more often then not, even at their blackest and buzziest, the sound is infused with something distinctly not black, or there’s inevitably some crazy poppy / proggy / ROCKING part is right around the corner. And to be honest, in a world of buzzing and blasting black metal clones, it’s records like this that end up sticking the most.
While it took a few listens to really get into what these guys were doing, once we did, we began to have trouble understanding why more bands didn’t actually do something similar. Might not be black metal record of the year, but just might have to make up a blackened heavy rock category, cuz we’re digging this like crazy.
At 40 years old, Aquarius is the oldest independent record store in San Francisco. We try to only carry music we love, and we’re always searching for more new, cool, weird and wonderful music. All of which we then share with you, our loyal customers.
Tags: Album of the day, Aquarius Records, black metal, Glorior Belli, metal blade, sludge, The Great Southern Darkness
This entry was posted on Sunday, October 16th, 2011 at 7:59 am and is filed under 2011, Album of the Day, Roadburn Recommended . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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