Métal hurlant

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

Even fifteen years later, Métal Hurlant is hard to evaluate. For a few Misanthrope fans, it is their ultimate album. For many others, it embodies the lowest point in their career: an unremarkable release from a band of which the thirty minutes of fame were well behind at that point. Listening to it in cold blood, no, Métal Hurlant is not bad. It would even be a perfectly fine album if it was not so pretentious. Pretentious, the sumptuous limited edition two-CDs digipak. Pretentious, the lyrics which indulge more and more in neo-catholic (sic) and sociopolitical bullshit. And, above all, pretentious, the song lengths.

Because, if Misanthrope used to record long tracks in the early years, it was somehow justified by their wildly imaginative avant-garde nature: (too) often, these songs sounded more like a combination of several mini-songs. Once these experiments were pretty much over, the average song length dropped to an average of five minutes, better suited to a more direct melodeath style. Métal Hurlant, however, features no less than five tracks clocking at more than seven minutes... most of these written as if they were only five-minutes long. Artificially inflating the song length in an attempt to sound epic has never been a good move. The tricks are just too obvious, like this guest solo from virtuoso shred artist Patrick Rondat on Plus de Descendance, unneeded and artificial excrescence. Even a sympathetic mid-tempo track like Sentiment Nocturne, a welcomed catchy relief after the never-ending death metal delivery of Théologie du Misanthrope, is still too long for what it proposes.

This increased song length had a practical side-effect: the regular album was slightly too long to be released on a single CD, hence the double digipak. Looking back at reviews published at the time, it seems that a lot of people, me included, actually mistook the second CD as a mere bonus, similar to Sadistic Sex Daemon 2-CDs special edition. Further adding to the confusion, the last four tracks are, indeed, bonus, consisting in alternate versions (two instrumental, and two English-sung versions). Obviously, it gets hard to discuss an album’s general sound, structure and organization when it isn’t even clear what the actual album consists in.

Overblown, obese, poorly marketed, and overall impossible to digest: from then on, the case seemed to be settled. A pity, as if one feels brave enough to dig under the fat, the inspiration lies there to be found... kind of. Granted, it is not the extravaganza of the early works, nor the irresistible camp enthusiasm of the swedish era, but at least it is not the tedious run-of-the-mill melodeath of previous year Misanthro-Thérapie, either. L’Exaltation de la Croix marks the furthest point the band has ever ventured into the realm of black metal, epic style, and it is much better done than Grand Démonologue, their previous attempt at the genre. The majestic middle part of Le Triptyque des Enfers, with its discrete keyboard and extensive guitar solos, is an example amongst many others proving that whenever they want, the guys could still produce much more thoughtful music than random blastbeats-leaden fills. And they could still craft good riffs, too, spicing as usual their prog death metal with various influences – predominantly thrash here, in songs like Le Triptyque des Enfers, again, or Sulfureuses Contestations, which would be a true killer if only (1) it were shorter and (2) it didn’t boast these silly protest lyrics – we know these may just be posture, they sound silly nonetheless. Notice the few guests here and there: apart from Patrick Rondat, already mentioned, one may spot a discrete touch of backing female vocals on a couple of tracks, as well as the awkward guitar-and-vocals performance from You Oshima on Supplication for God, his high-pitched black metal shrieks sounding completely at odd with de l’Argilière usual medium-pitched growls, but well, the surprise is not unpleasant.

Speaking about de l’Argilière... the man deserves his own paragraph as, even if at the time he had practically given up any participation in songwriting other than the lyrics, he did, and still does, account for most of the band’s image and atmosphere. While his growl unquestionably got better and better with every further release, his other main vocal style, a unique cry-like moan he uses as a substitute for cleans, will remain a hit-or-miss until the end. Why, on this very album, is it more often a miss than a hit? Why Reine Martyre is such an abomination of a track? After all Misanthrope has recorded a handful of these slow, semi-acoustic, ballad-ish songs in the past, and, musically-wise, that one is not worse – nor better – than those. No, it’s the sole S.A.S de l’Argilière, the Eternal Misanthrope, alternatively growling with the utmost seriousness and crying like daddy’s little girl about poor queen Marie-Antoinette being slaughtered by the all-so-evil Révolutionnaires, who ruins it beyond redemption.

But, writing about Misanthrope, nothing is ever straightforward, and the ultimate irony of this album, of which the main flaw is unnecessarily long tracks, is that its best track is also... the very longest. Incidentally, with its twelve-minutes-and-a-half, Le Commerce du Crime is also the longest song ever in the 30-years-long Misanthrope discography. It is a mid-tempo epic, a genre de l’Argilière, Moréac and co. had hardly explored in the past, perhaps surprisingly if one consider their progressive background; actually, it may well be THE epic the Misanthrope fan had been expecting for years, a real epic, with a real structure rather than a bunch of random ideas loosely stringed together, which still retains all the elements the band has built its reputation upon – bass shredding, exalted harsh voice, technical solos, the occasional grandiloquent piano scores and, last but not least, historical lyrics which do not sound stupid.

Perhaps, after all, Métal Hurlant was not pretentious, just ambitious. However, it reeks too much of a band which behaved as if it were big, while it clearly no longer was, to be fully agreeable. The following albums will sound far more honest; thus, better.

Highlights: Sentiment Nocturne, Le Commerce du Crime.

This is Misanthrope at their most complex and ambitious. However, even at their most elaborate state of mind the fabulous progressive deathsters can play more than half the death metal fraternity under the table, even after a feast with the contents of tens of bottles of champagne swallowed. And this is what pretty much happens on this “Metal Hurlant” which slightly more optimistic aura may have been prompted by the guys’ other engagements, like the avant-garde doom/death metal formation Argile, and the gothic/doom collaboration with the diva Ayin Aleph. So the musicians were getting busier elsewhere, but still found the requisite amount of time to properly shape another complex, multi-layered opus regardless of its colossal length, clocking on just under an hour, the material split into two discs with instrumental and English versions of some of the songs added to the second disc.

After the multifarious octopus that “Sadistic Sex Daemon” was the band definitely needed a break, but not willing to interrupt the creative process with a lengthy hiatus, here they are hurling themselves at the field for the umpteenth time. Not to worry as this effort would be a delight for the band fans all over, and for the metal community in general. “L’exaltation de la Croix” opens the album in the usual intense manner the guys battering down any hurlants… sorry, hurdles, along the way producing a nice complex opus in various tempos and moods. “Theologie du Misanthrope” isn’t a sloucher, either, and its brutal accumulations would be a wonder to listen to helped by some gorgeous complex thrashing and stunning melodic leads. “Sentiment Nocturne” is a more relaxed mid-pacer leaving the more flamboyant embellishments aside, compensating with copious amounts of melody including such from several keyboard sweeps. Balladic lyricism starts “Reine Martyre” the pensive tone later upgraded to the doomy parametres, but nothing extravagant or speedy. “Le Tryptique des Enfers” largely compensates for the few idyllic moments encountered earlier, raging hard with fury to spare not without the help of several aggressive thrashy sections which aggravate the scattered blast-beating outrages. “Le Haras D’Amazones” relies on the atmosphere and the mid-tempo the final result strangely captivating also thanks to several superb melodic lead sections.

The title-track is a death/thrashing progressive masterpiece, an 8-min roller-coaster full of sharp cutting riffs, blazing leads, atmospheric sprawls, “keyboards vs. riffs” duels, and plenty of vocal drama with cleaner croons provided to bond with the main death metal rendings. “Le Supplicie” is a hyper-active complex deathster with blast-beating crescendos dominating the scenery giving way to virtuous melo-thrash rhythms in the second half. “Maitre du Temps” is a formidable steam-roller with heavy squashing riffs rolling remorselessly with more dynamic dashes thrown in as an afterthought. The most ambitious part of the album is yet to come, though, reflected in the exiting trio which comprises the exuberant progressive extreme metal ”symphony” “Sulfureuses Contestations”, a supreme riff-fest worthy of later-period Death; the 12-min behemoth “Le Commerce du Crime” where the progressive death metal panorama reaches operatic proportions with the assistance of numerous doomy and balladic configurations without a single dash of speed utilized; and “Plus de Descendance”, a fabulous technical/progressive thrasher with brilliant virtuoso lead performance and mazey riff-salads which flow seamlessly into each other creating an uninterrupted string of intricate compelling guitar work.

Even after the indomitable “Immortel” the band continue to excel with each subsequent album nearly matching the manic grandeur of this supposed magnum opus. It’s true that with such a wide palette available to them the guys have plenty of variations to play with without repeating themselves, but these gargantuan landscapes drawn with such meticulousness beggar belief at times including on the album reviewed here. The band adroitly toss the death, thrash, doom and progressive metal ingredients always finding the perfect balance between them, never messing it up. Certainly, high musical proficiency is mandatory for this eventful blend to work, but it’s not only the perfect command of the instruments that makes the Misanthrope sagas sound so irresistible. There’s also this unique, not very often found, skill in weaving all the nuances in a characteristic, difficult to imitate manner, the band’s works often acquiring larger-than-life operatic dimensions having won them the “classicists of metal” tag. Some blame them in overdoing it with so much music thrown at the listener at any time, but with this abundance of ideas and this compositional swagger one can only make that “small” a contribution to the metal scene.

This hurlant here came close to being the second creative peak for the band although both “Irremediable” and “Aenigma Mystica” have their moments of genius, and are by no means flops offering a very similar compendium of all the mentioned styles with a bigger emphasis on death metal perhaps, the guys looking in nostalgia at the genre that shot them into the stratosphere. It seems as though France’s finest will always be around providing their complex, multi-faceted products every other year. And the fans can’t help but be optimistic about the future with regular dozes of exquisite philanthropic metal hurled at them on regular bases.