Well call me a sucker for French Black Metal bands garbed in plague masks. Abduction return with their 2nd full length record. “Sous les Cendres et la Pierre” opens up the album with some lovely clean guitar lines and accompanying tom rolls from the percussion section. The song continues to build and transitions effortlessly for the first two minutes of the song and the bomb blasts and tremolo picking galore. I can hear the Emperor and early Primordial in the note selection. Guilliiame Fluery’s fretboard work is blazing and opens up with some very well played blistering melody. The opening track continues to build and then a second acoustic section and then some aggressive song building. I can hear some early Ulver and Borknagar and then we get to the clean vocal sections that are not overbearing and do not dominate the arrangement of the song. This then leads to an outro that counterparts the opening guitar lines which have an almost avant-garde jazz vibe to them. There is a lot to like in this opening track and the growth Abduction display from their first effort is quite impressive. The next clean section I hear reminds me of Dodheimsgard of Ved Buens Ende.
The tempo change on this record is interesting. The opening track is nearly fourteen minutes. The following track almost two minutes and the next almost six and a half minutes The atmosphere painted early in this album shapes the things that are to come later on the record. Winding down with layered arpeggios and more intricate drum work from Morgan Velly. Francois Blanc’s vocal arrangements on this would make Trickster G proud. “Les Visiteurs du Soir” is a unique guitar instrumental that has some jazzy arpeggiated movement into some silky melodic build.
“A L’heure du Crépuscule” the title track of the album opens quite intensely and then builds to a short acoustic break before coming back in with the same type of intensity of the intro riff. Again, Francois Blanc’s gorgeous clean vocals are quite strong on this song. About half way into this one I get an early Arcturus vibe. This is a really, really, good record. The growth in songwriting from the last effort is quite noticeable and Abduction continues to compose unique avant garde black metal. The four plague doctors continue to impress and this is right up at the top of best black metal albums I have heard so far in 2018
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Reviews without a million name drops would be nice
on Apr 14th, 2018 at 13:19yeah this is awesome. their drummer really shines on the jazzier sections.
on Apr 16th, 2018 at 09:22This is pretty tight stuff. I dig it. Good point about the drumming too. Killer stuff. The Nicks know what’s up!
on Apr 26th, 2018 at 02:49