The Great Old Ones : "Kadath"

 

This band from France's first album released in 2012 was so impressive that thirteen years later I find myself once again listening to them four albums later in hopes they will recapture that magic when all evidence in three albums released since then points in the direction it will not, they have ranged from better than average to being an impressive black metal act, but their mission statement has been to bring a Lovecraft inspired theme to black metal. They did this on the first album by using a more surreal,  shoegazing atmosphere that captured the mood but has only followed it up with music that follows the status quo even when it comes to forward-thinking black metal bands. 

The first track to this album has me fearing more of the same, but the second song shows a glimmer of hope peering up from the depths of the bleak evil they should be pursuing more actively. One change with the band that influenced this is the addition of drummer Julien Deana. The rest of the band is the same line-up that recorded their 2019 album. "In the Mouth of Madness" might as well be Watain, who sounds more Lovecraftian in their more esoteric moments than the way the guitar attacks here. The sung vocals mixed in the background are a nice melodic touch but the sonic barrage feels like it holds less of their thumbprint and conforms more to the standard of black metal. There needs to be more atmosphere. After all Black metal should never conform to any standard even its own. 

"Under the Sign of Koth" is a rapid-fire rager, that thrashes out with much aggression. Not that we have ever heard a black metal band do that before. Feels like a mix of Dissection and Enslaved.  I'm not a fan of 15-minute songs, so it's going to take Cthulhu themselves coming out to play a bag of pipe solos to convince me on this one. There is a great deal of jamming. It feels like the song ends at the five-minute mark and what picks up from there should be a new song.  It feels like the spoken segment in "Stonehenge" which might be the album's most Lovecraftian moment. They do go into a more sweeping post-roc jam, but I am not sure if it needed to be drawn out like that.

They go back to the blast beats for the last song, which has the familiar buzz of 240 bpm tremolo picking.  I will give this an 8.5, which means this is more well-written than the past three albums but still does not touch the first album, however, it's pretty authentic Black Metal that sounds like they are from Sweden even if they are from France. 

pst34