CANTIQUE LEPREUX
“PAYSAGES POLAIRES”
Album Review by Dark Juan
5/10

Cantique Lepreux are:

Blanc Feu – Guitars and vocals (Guitares et voix)
Cadavre – Drums (Batterie – sounds better in French, you have to admit!)
Matrak – Bass (Basse)

Well. That has to rank highly amongst the most shitty weekends I have ever suffered. A combination of a certain someone off their meds and going completely fucking hatstand, the French tax system being frankly a motherfucker of colossal proportions, having a dangerously infected finger that the local doctor wants to slice open (she can bloody well sod off, the manky Frog sawbones), struggling with your own mental issues and finishing it off with smashing the back window of the Anti-Popemobile and not being able to afford replacing it has left your friendly neighbourhood hellpriest more than a little hacked off, contemplating murder and suicide by turns and feeling spectacularly violent. Only the most martial music on the Dark Juan Hard Drive Of Despondent Gloom And More Misery Than My Dying Bride At Their Most Morbid will do to be passed under the somewhat baroque microscope of my attention, lest I take my axe (it would be my chainsaw but I have managed to fuck that up as well…) and go and visit Helene, the village gossip, and give her something to REALLY talk about. If she weren’t reduced to basically human croutons…

Cantique Lepreux (Leper Hymn, according to Google Translate. My French ain’t that hot…) are, rather surprisingly, not French. I am currently listening to Paysages Polaires (Polar Landscapes in good old jolly English) from this rather engaging Quebecois band. Yes, Cantique Lepreux are French Canadians from Quebec and this being a black metal album (metal noir Quebecois) I obviously can’t tell whether the vocal is in English or French. However, I am personally convinced this is a French language record as all the song titles and the band’s Facebook page are all in French. It matters not as vocalist Blanc Feu (White Fire… sigh) roars in a manner that suggests he is wishing that his own lungs will come out of his nose and his intention is to beat to death the first three rows of his audience with them. The sound of this album is actually surprisingly good for a black metal record, Cantique Lepreux opting to not follow the traditional black metal model of sounding like they have played in a submarine at 30 fathoms and recorded the resulting sonar return as their finished product. NO, THERE IS AN ACTUAL PRODUCTION HERE! Guitar, bass, cymbals and drums are all audible and don’t all sound like they have a bad earth. Although the first song, entitled Le Feu Secret (I’m not insulting your intelligence on that one, dear reader) has a very strange noise going on throughout it, like a high pitched boinkboinkboinkboinkboink. I think it is some kind of unintentional noise from Blanc Feu’s guitar picking but it is somewhat offputting when the song itself is pretty damned good. The record sounds like a cross between the more martial sounds of early classic black metal, your Dark Funeral, Enslaved, Lord Belial sort of stuff mixed with the symphonic stylings of Emperor and Dimmu Borgir. It’s not a modern sounding record, but black metal is not a very progressive form of music anyway.

Best tune on here is the splendid Les Etoiles Endeuilles (The Bereaved Stars) which is a rapid fire machine gun blast of high calibre, high lethality metal. The album evokes winter in theme and sound and has an almost romantic feel in places which is strange but welcome. I’m confused by this record and my desire to murder my way through most of northern France has not abated. It’s good, solid metal but it is also unexceptional. And that’s sad.

The Patented Dark Juan Blood Splat Rating System awards Cantique Lepreux 5/10. Average, average, average.

TRACKLIST

Le Feu Secret (The Secret Fire)
Les Etoiles Endeuilles (The Bereaved Stars)
Paysages Polaires I (Polar Landscapes)
Paysages Polaires II
Paysages Polaires III
Helas (Alas)
Le Fleau (The Scourge)

https://www.facebook.com/Cantique-Lépreux-1508635429464649/

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