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Misanthrope > Libertine Humiliations > Reviews
Misanthrope - Libertine Humiliations

Milestone Pornoramatherion - 80%

Sean16, May 31st, 2020
Written based on this version: 1998, CD, Holy Records (Digipak)

[Disclaimer – I had written a first review for this album, more than ten years ago. Without claiming that one to be better, a retrospective look was much needed.]

Perhaps, to fully understand an album like Libertine Humiliations, is it necessary to start with a few words about the positioning of Misanthrope on the French metal scene in the very last years of the 20th century. Because, you wouldn’t believe it when you see these now 50-years-old guys playing in front of an audience of 100-150 fans at best, but they were once huge. Huge at the scale of French metal, that is – which is not such a tiny scale some people would like it to be. Everything started with Visionnaire, their 1997 opus, recorded at the then brand new Fredman Studios, Gothenburg, Sweden, inaugurating what would later be referred to as their “Swedish trilogy” – the present album, Libertine Humiliations, 1999, being the second of the trilogy. All of a sudden, French metal magazines (there were three of them in these good old days) would be flooded with eccentric photosessions of exuberant frontman S.A.S de l’Argilière posing in 19th century outfit, surrounded by candles and wearing his trademark sunglasses. All of a sudden, what was until three years before an obscure experimental / avant-garde death metal act, founded in 1988 but that basically no one listened to, ended up elected best French metal band of the year by the readers of two of these magazines in 1999, and again in 2000. And all of sudden, in 2002, these same magazines would send it back to Hell, where it was coming from; but this will be told in another story.

In my original 2009 review, I had described this album as “true Misanthrope”. Satan knows I was wrong. There is no such thing as “true Misanthrope”. The essence of the band resides in always evolving, for the best and for the worst. But I could be forgiven, because what this album actually is, is a textbook of all the clichés which will forever stick to the band, which is notably different. Molière? check. Over-the-top band pictures on flaming background, complete with cigars, swords and muskets? check. Libertinage? check. Crazy bass solos? check. The list goes on. That’s where you’ll hear the famous lines ‘Jean-Baptiste Pocquelin, called Molière’, ‘Septembre 1793, l’horreur est systématique’, or ‘pornoramatherion, megapornoramatron’. The Molière reference is particularly symptomatic. It is as old as the band, which indeed took its name from famous play “le Misanthrope”. But until this very album the actual references to the 17th century playwright were otherwise scarce, to say anything about the imagery, which used to be completely Molière-UNrelated. From then on, and in spite of the bandmembers’ efforts, Misanthrope would remain this ‘aristocratic’ ‘Molière’ band, a tag which certainly helped to its rise, but also to its demise. Think about it, a similar story happened to Running Wild and pirates. How many Running Wild texts actually deal with pirates? One, two songs per album, right? Hey, didn’t S.A.S de l’Argilière once admitted he learned to play the guitar with Running Wild? But we digress...

The ‘image’ acts a strong lure when it comes to describing the genuine sound of such an album. As of 2020, who’s still listening to it anyway, apart from surviving Misanthrope fans? Some guy, somewhere on the Internet, probably only remembering it was recorded in Gothenburg, once wrote about “the time Misanthrope sounded like In Flames”. Off-topic. If – IF – a parallel had to be drawn with one of the pioneering Gothenburg melodeath acts, de l’Argilière himself would probably quote At the Gates, and I would rather quote Dark Tranquillity. The increased importance of post-production and keyboards at the end of the 90s, followed by a return to a heavier sound at the beginning of the 2000s, the bands’ respective use of clean vocals, there may be more than mere coincidence there... But don’t get it wrong, Misanthrope does not owe anything to Dark Tranquillity, perhaps is it even the other way around, who knows what exactly happened at the Fredman’s in those long-forgotten days. Denying to Misanthrope its own creativity by comparing with other, better-known acts, or reducing the band to mere eccentricity, is ignoring the ugly truth: back at the time, there was space for a genuinely FRENCH melodic death metal sound, and Misanthrope was its Prophet – now about the disciples, one could argue forever, but Anorexia Nervosa and, later, Gojira, are not-so-wild guesses. Yes, believe it or not, Gojira would not have been the same without Misanthrope.

So, finally, it’s written, Libertine Humiliations is a melodic death metal album. Which means melodic but, above all, death metal. Don’t be fooled by the mid-tempo opener Misanthrope Necromancer, at times bordering on power metal, or by the first minute of L’Ecume des Chouans with its oh-so-hooking riff. Blastbeats are never far, and this same L’Ecume des Chouans will soon degenerate into an aggressive mixture of death-doom riffs topped by de l’Argilière shouting about the bloody repression of the 1793 Vendean insurrection. At 666 Days... and Sous l’Eclat Blanc du Nouveau Millénaire are death metal from the first bar to the last, and still rank today amongst the heaviest tracks the band ever recorded, even if, later, a few tracks from Métal Hurlant or Alpha X Omega may outclass them. A highly characteristic feature, most of the vocals on this album are growled, really growled – not the “harsh-exalted” style. This might even be the Misanthrope album with the most limited vocal diversity; its detractors may perhaps point it out as a sign of decline in inspiration, but it adds to its homogeneity. Very little of the “crying” voice so typical of the early efforts, apart from tiny bits on the title track or L’Ecume des Chouans. Granted, clean and/or spoken parts are more present, especially on these two same tracks, but still they remain the exception rather than the rule. And, the final clue – keyboards which are much, much more discrete than on the predecessor Visionnaire, or the successor Misanthrope Immortel. Dedicated keyboardist Sergio Gruz had then left, and the almighty Jean-Baptiste Boitel was still concentrating on guitars, for now only gently toying with orchestrations while secretly preparing the fury he would unleash on the following album.

One might however claim the work someway lacks of riffs to fully qualify as death metal. This would be a total misconception, nonetheless likely to happen to anyone who listened to it right after, let’s say, Ænigma Mystica from 2013, for which riffs are the one and only reason to exist. While riffs are not at the heart of Libertine Humiliations, still they’re omnipresent. Total Eclipse Chaos, for instance, is all riffs, so is Matador de l’Extrême. But the importance given to the leads and solos forcibly downgrades them. Remember the band used two guitars at the time, and it was for a reason. The guys may have been no longer avant-garde, whatever it meant, but they were for sure proudly progressive, and would have felt dishonoured if every track did not reach its quota of solos, either guitar and – but of course! – bass (ha, the middle part of Combattant sans Sépulture). No, if there was a complain to file against this album, this would rather be about its second half which seems to sometimes run low on new ideas. It’s not bad, far from it, but let’s admit that Antiquary to Mediocrity sounds much like an alternate version of At 666 Days..., that the bass-electro break (sic) of Combattant sans Sépulture is... misplaced, and that re-recording Crisis of Souls, a song dating back from the band’s demo days, might not have been a stellar idea. Another brutal moment, alright. Was this album such in lack of brutal moments, you felt compelled to exhumate a long-dead track?

Perhaps not, but all is easily forgiven when closing the album on its title-track-which-is-not-exactly-title, Humiliations Libertines. Many will vote for L’Ecume des Chouans as the album’s masterpiece, if only for its nefarious reputation (“le morceau qu’on a voulu nous interdire !”), but that one is probably superior. Oh, it starts inoffensive, with a grand piano intro bringing a much welcomed relief after the fury of Antiquary to Mediocrity, topped by de l’Argilière’s clean voice, so rare on this album, this voice full of precisely faked aristocratic morgue – again, the image, the image, re-read the first paragraph. This is another English-sung track, which sounds always odd for France-rooted lyrics, but this band is personified oddity. And odd it goes more and more. A slow, melancholic doom riff to begin, then it goes on, faster and faster, until it becomes completely nuts, a few-seconds-only thrash break, blastbeats, bass solo, de l’Argilière roaring and spitting sexual nonsense – Pornoramatherion! Megapornoramatron! Humiliations Libertines! Célimène’s a dreadful libertine! Alcest’s humiliated but is a sadistic tortured cracked brain! – before you remember that 1) de l’Argilière is a first-hour Celtic Frost fan, and 2) Krakkbrain was the name of bassist Jean Jacques Moréac’s now split-up technical thrash band, and everything makes sense...

...wait, no, it does not. But who cares, when enjoying a milestone of French metal.

Highlights: the first five tracks + Humiliations Libertines

The plane has now crashed into the mountain... - 65%

natrix, April 28th, 2007

When I first got this album, I really liked it. Loved it, even. The songs were catchy, heavy and really enjoyable. Kind of like Metallica's black album, but sadly, not as classic or as good. It seems that Misanthrope took all of thier eccentric elements, cast them aside, and made a straight up metal album, which though really fucking well played and expertly arranged, is dated and highly unoriginal.

I'm not going to do a track by track review. "Matador de l'Extreme" is a great song, with excellent bass work, which is prevalent throughout the album, and the best turns in songs. They redid a song from their demos, "Crisis of Soul," which is basically well done and primitive death thrash. I hate to say it, but the production here works against the band, and makes them sound quite (but not totally) like all the Gothenburg bands. Had this been their last album doing striaght up melodeath, I'd be fine with it, but their later albums really didn't go back to being the sick, twisted music that I love Misanthrope for. Keyboards are kept in the back, guitars and drums create a grindstone, a strong contrast to the very seperate, jazzy interplay on Visionaire, and the bass cruises over everything (which is good). Even Philippe's vocals are rather monotone on here...a real shame, as a maniacal vocal performance could have really given this album a boost. With the open structures and simple riffs, he had more than enough room to work around.

Sadly, at the end of the day, this album brings very little to the table as far as originality. Misanthrope basically ditched all their innovations (minus the bass mastery) and went for straight up melo death on here. It sure didn't age well, and was the last Misanthrope album that I ever bought. They experimented with different approaches throughout their career, much like Sentenced, before finally settling in this comfortable little niche, but ran out of runway.

Really good... but really boring. - 65%

Edgecrusher, February 13th, 2003

When this album first came out, I was all over it. "God, this is really good !". But as the novelty wore out, I found myself skipping songs, almost narrowing the record to three songs...

"Libertine..." is basically "Visionnaire" part two, music-wise. All the elements that make Misanthrope are still there : the brutal death parts, the prog elements, the baroque feel, the doom lyrics... But everything sounds really uninspired. Songs like "Total Eclipse Chaos" or "Sous l'éclat blanc du nouveau Millénaire" are tedious, almost like it was a burden to record. On the other hand, "Antiquary to Mediocrity" is a really brutal song that would certainly appeal to extreme fans, but is unworthy of Misanthrope, given what they shown on "Visionnaire".

It's not that "Libertine..." is a bad album per se. There are several gems in there. "Misanthrope Necromancer" is a great number and "Combattant sans Sépulture" demonstrate a new face of the band, leaning towards a more dynamic, almost speed metal side. But everything sounds, well... soulless, like the band tried to repeat their previous success, while cutting down on their creativity. The guitar riffs sound like they're leftovers from "Visionnaire", and tend to drag into long solos ("L'Ecume des Chouans").

All in all, Misanthrope delivers, with "Libertine...", an average album, certainly unworthy of their previous effort. On the other hand, it's their most accessible album to date, and so could be a good place to start with the band. Many fans of the band tell me it's their favourite, so I guess I was expecting too much of the band after the masterpiece "Visionnaire"...