France, home of Europe’s new innovative black metal scene? Quite possibly. With bands such as black metal behemoths NEHEMAH, symphonic blasphemers Anorexia Nervosa and the rest of the glorious Black Legions of France, there’s a lot of untapped talent in this country world reknowned for its wine. French black metal labels are hard to come by but somehow, months ago, I found Occultum Productions who has been kind enough to send me just about everything they’ve ever put out. They do not scout out your typical by-the-book black metal bands who solely want to “keep it kvlt” and play black metal that was stylistic 10 years ago. This brings me to my latest review of something a little less metal, a lot more evil and depressing: VANNVIDD. A quaint one-man band side project of Svarthet of Hate Sanctuary.
Apparently, this disc is a compilation/best of CD of his previous works but you’d never know it by the flow of the entire CD. Sinitres Paysages plays like a tragic ballet. No words, no drums, no guitars, only the dreary emotion that can be portrayed by a piano. What? Black metal can’t be played on a piano? While that’s arguable by the much used keyboard in many symphonic black metal bands, this is more like black ambient music, best suited for a day blackened by rain and depression. Each song plays out like a suicide note being written or like a cold knife sliding over your skin cutting deeper. Every time I listen to this CD, I cannot help but be drawn into this dark world of despair, this sanctum of hate and loneliness.
While I have no idea exactly what Svarthet was thinking whe he penned each of these songs, I certainly know it wasn’t kittens and rainbows. Songs like Bloodmark I through Bloodmark III are chilling renditions of solitude and destitute landscapes. Track number three, Dethroned Spirit, is not only my favorite track of the disc, it also seems the most bleak. Composed of a droning up and down tempo, it’s reminiscent of scenes in horror films where someone has died or is the precursor to the typical scary scene where someone is about to be murdered. It gives me chills upon each listen yet leaves me wanting more. A CD such as this is hard to review as it seems like it’s meant to be the back drop of a play or ballet instead of something you’ll listen to in your car on the way to work. The ebb and flow of each song to the next takes you from sad to deathly suicidally depressed and back again, it’s a real weight on the emotions once you start listening to the astute composition of the music. Melodic deathly hymns is the only way I really know how to describe this work of depressing art.
My girlfriend has listened to this CD far more than me and she’s not a BM fan if that’s any indication of the extreme mood of this CD. Although this CD was supposed to be hand-numbered in a batch of 55, mine wasn’t numbered. I did however order it the day it came out so I can imagine it’s a low number. I was expecting something cold yet melancholic from this release but not something so overwhelmingly gloomy as I was given. I’m eagerly awaiting VANNVIDD’s upcoming split CDs with similar artists.
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