Year: 2024
Total Time: 46:21
Label: Season Of Mist
The journey of SETH in the world of French Black Metal represents a combination of tradition and innovation. From their debut in 1998 with the album “Les Blessures de l’Ame” to their most recent album “La Morsure du Christ” in 2021, the band has embarked on an interesting musical journey with many experiments until what seems like a complete return to the sound with which they started.
Three years after the exceptional “La Morsure du Christ” in 2021, the French return with their new work “La France des Maudits” with the same spirit, both musically and lyrically, that pervaded its predecessor. According to the band’s Bandcamp, thematically the album deals with the French Revolution and the victims of religious fundamentalism.
As for the music itself, there’s tremendous production, aggression, symphonic and acoustic bridges that give a dramatic character, and the singer adds an extra sense of theatricality in several parts of the album. “Paris des Malefices,” “Et Que Vive Le Diable!” with its beautiful riffs and some choral sections, and “La Destruction Des Reliques” form the triad that opens the album. All the characteristics of their sound are here, managing to fully immerse you in their work.
In the middle of the album, we find “Dans Le Coeur Un Poignard” and “Marianne,” where the speeds decrease and emotion prevails. Especially “Dans Le Coeur Un Poignard” lives up to its title “knife in the heart,” slow, atmospheric, and with a heavy emotional load. Although I don’t know the lyrics, the song probably refers to the assassination of journalist and politician Jean-Paul Marat by Charlotte Corday, a story worth looking into!
“Marianne,” the name the French have given to their Republic as an incarnate figure, is an instrumental piece that harmoniously binds the continuity of the album, followed by “Ivre Du Sang Des Saints” where the speeds increase, and there’s an additional aggressiveness in the vocals. The album continues with my favorite, “Insurrection,” with melodies, excellent riff alternations, intense drumming, and Saint Vincent pouring his soul into the microphone. Somewhere past the middle of the song, the speed drops, keyboards dominate, acoustic elements from the guitars take over, and cries of desperation make this part eerie.
The album closes with “Le Vin Du Condamne,”, a piece with volume, depth, and all the elements of the album present. The outro of the song gives the feeling of an opus, a sick performance that has just ended.
The overall sense of the album is that “it wants to make you listen to it again and again”, immersing you in what SETH wants to convey. This is a work filled with excellent production, which contributes to the whole atmosphere that SETH want to convey, and that is because you can clearly hear all the elements that they’ve put in their songs. We are definitely talking about an album loaded with a lot of elements, with several switches within the songs. But the composition of all these is so well structured, that the 45 minutes of the album flow easily.
Rating: 8/10
Editor: Antonis Braikidis
Related Link: SETH – Official Page
