Via Doloris – Guerre Et Paix (Season Of Mist) [Rick Eaglestone]
A debut album that arrives fully formed is a rare thing, and Guerre Et Paix, the first full-length from Via Doloris, is exactly that. Released via Season of Mist, this is the project of French multi-instrumentalist Gildas Le Pape – one man, seven compositions, and a vision so coherent and so committed that it is difficult to believe you are not listening to a band ten years into their career.
The fact that session drums are handled by Frost of Satyricon and 1349 says something about the circles this record is moving in – but what it says even more loudly is that the songwriting underneath had to be strong enough to warrant that collaboration, and it absolutely is.
Shifting between French, English, and Norwegian across its seven compositions, Guerre Et Paix treats language itself as an instrument – each tongue carrying its own emotional gravity, its own weight, its own texture against the music.
The artwork by Linnea Syversen lends the whole package a sacral, almost ritualistic quality that is entirely in keeping with what Le Pape has created sonically. This is an album that demands your full attention.
Opener Communion sets the tone with an atmospheric deliberateness that has genuine weight to it – this is not a record that rushes anywhere, and from the first moments Le Pape makes that clear.
Frost’s drumming grounds everything in physical momentum without ever overwhelming the melodic intent, and as an opening statement it works precisely because it feels like an act of arrival rather than a warm-up. Un Franc Soleil, written in French, is the album at its most quietly devastating – a track built around absence as much as sound, and the most emotionally exposed moment on the record. If you’re not paying close attention, it might pass you by, and that would be a serious mistake.
Omnipresents is where the folk and pagan elements that run through this record become most audible – there is a timeless, almost ancestral quality to the arrangement here, and the contrast between its more aggressive passages and the moments of reflective calm is sharper than anywhere else on the album. It is a demonstration of real compositional maturity.
For The Glory sits at the heart of Guerre Et Paix and is, for me, the album’s crowning moment – the track that most fully encapsulates what Via Doloris is and what this record is trying to do. It is the kind of track that keeps pulling you back, and the more time you spend with it the more you find in it. Hands down.
Ultime Tourment is the album’s centrepiece in terms of sheer ambition – ten minutes that justify every second of their runtime and then some. It builds with a patience that most bands simply don’t have the nerve for, and by the time it reaches its peak it has earned that intensity completely. Go and put this on loud and give it the room it needs.
Visdommens Vei, I brings the Norwegian language into the record with full force, and the mid-track shift into something more luminous and folk-tinged is the kind of moment that makes you stop whatever you’re doing and just listen – it is a genuinely brave compositional choice, and it lands every time.
Visdommens Vei II closes the album at just over two minutes, and that brevity is exactly right – it doesn’t tie anything off neatly, it simply lets the weight of everything that has come before it settles. Guerre Et Paix has earned that ending.
Via Doloris have felt like black metal’s most carefully kept secret for long enough – with Guerre Et Paix that is emphatically no longer the case. Gildas Le Pape has delivered one of the most fully realised debut albums in the genre in recent memory, a record that is meticulous in its craft, uncompromising in its vision, and deeply, genuinely moving in its emotional honesty.
The collaboration with Frost is not a gimmick or a draw – it is a demonstration of just how strong the songwriting here is, because without that foundation no session drummer in the world, however legendary, could have made this record what it is. This is black metal that has something real to say, and it says it with extraordinary grace.
“The album is about confronting the fractures within yourself – the war between what you are and what you want to become.” – Gildas Le Pape. 8/10
NO/MÁS – No Peace (Redefining Darkness Records) [Joe Guatieri]
NO/MÁS is a Grindcore band from Washington, D.C. They are a name known by quite a few weirdos out there like myself who follow extreme music and have a hatred of their sense of hearing. They’ve been around for a good while now, forming in 2017 and putting out several releases.
Surprisingly enough with their album that I’m covering here No Peace, it’s only the second “full-length” that they have released with their previous effort coming out in 2022. Again it’s a band that I’ve been aware of but never listened to as I go to more Grindcore gigs then what I do listen to, I was excited to get into it!
The album is typically short at 22 minutes, providing a hammer on your head until you see stars in your peripheral vision. NO/MÁS travel across the world and take influence from some things that you might not expect. For one, there’s a lot of Thrash Metal worship throughout the album, it’s like the band are screaming I love you Slayer!
Take track six, Leech and you’ve got an odd-pairing of two sections that miraculously connect. You’ve got an obvious wink and nod to Raining Blood as they take a fun spin on that famous riff and then juxtapose it with a solo which is straight out of the F-Zero playbook.
No Peace sits much more within Metal than what it does with Hardcore as it’s more about pure destruction than it is speed. The blast beats are especially killer right the way through with such a clean and impactful drum sound, it doesn’t give you any time to breathe and proves what an incredible drummer Henry Everitt is.
The bass also gets a lot of time to shine, at its best it sounds like you’re getting a beating by a steel pipe, the instrument reverberates throughout the room and is always present.
I want to point out track nine, Choke Point, it’s a whole fake out, at first it makes me think oh this is too familiar until it reaches its arms out and brings in great head banging grooves. It goes from a more Groove Metal passage and then in front of your very eyes, the song deconstructs itself and takes elements away, leaving Industrial Metal grit by the end, such a fabulous idea.
Overall, with No Peace, NO/MÁS wears their influences proudly on their sleeve and has a great grasp over subverting your expectations, making for plenty of fun moments. It might be aggressive and off-the-wall but at least for a Grindcore record it feels oddly welcoming, taking you by the hand and saying look we don’t want you to throw up all of the time, only some of it.
The album is a laugh with some fantastic locked-in performances, it’s a night out that you remember fondly but still forget about at least half of what happened. 7/10
Diatribes – Degenerate (Brutal Records) [Mark Young]
A new player has entered the arena!! Diatribes, arriving from the fertile Brazilian underground with their debut release Degenerate. It basically nails its colour to the mast from the off, once you get past the introduction that Death’s Echo Chants sets in motion.
The Witch, is effectively what extreme metal sounds like where you ignore current trends or themes and stay as close as possible to what you got into this in the first place. It also sets the tone for what is to follow and makes no apologies about that. Its all drums that mash and riffs that explode outwardly.
In the respect of being hard, heavy, extreme all of the standard descriptions that can be applied are satisfied here and even more so on Hostility Within that takes a core arrangement and then hammers you with it. They know to keep these songs on the shorter side too, conscious of repeating the same message too many times. There’s a definite Slayer/Exodus flavour on display too, which isn’t a bad thing really.
There is obviously a ying to this yang and that is the fact that despite these tracks doing what they are supposed to do, they flash by without embedding. If you asked me right now for a song that stood out for me, I’d go with Masquerade, only for that Mandatory Suicide homage as its starts.
The songs are energetic and built for being played live, of this I’m absolutely certain because I don’t think that Diatribes have the word ‘slow’ in their vocab. Because of this need for constant aggression to be manifested in song, you need them to have variation In how they play out. Just using speed for speeds sake only goes so far.
Still, this is a minor thing really when you consider that they have come here to be aggressive, to bring tightly focused extreme metal back into play. For those who would like to believe that Grunge, Nu-Metal or any other movement didn’t happen then this is for them.
Its as Old School as you could possibly get without directly copying those influences. I think we should applaud them because it is a strong debut that points to good things coming.
7/10Parallel Minds – Cairn (Self Released) [Matt Bladen]Let’s go once again in to the epic progressive metal sound of French band Parallel Minds shall we?
Cairn is their fourth studio full length and again brings together thrash, death, power and prog metal which has seen them compared to Blind Guardian, Evergrey and Symphony X and while the latter is very much where Parallel Minds ply their trade, the two former appear throughout with Orishas and Bhopal taking Blind Guardian into some African music sounds as Togo musicians Arka’n Asrafokor and Silveira Lakoélé Atalawoè add their skillset.
It’s an album of cinematic orchestrations, neo-classical guitar solos, blistering double kicks and vocals that can hit top end high notes, gutsy passionate mids and gravel throated growls. The influence of Devin Townsend too comes in just how eclectic it is musically, this variation of this album comes from the heart of this album being the symbol of the cairn, stone piles left by travellers along their path.
Cairn is a 61 minute concept album, so it’s not a quick listen, but if you give it time you’ll be rewarded but some brilliant performances, great songwriting and a full cast of guest artist that drive the concept this album tries to convey. There’s Native American chants that frame
Trail Of Tears before it blows up into Iron Maiden style twin harmonies.
More guests from the French scene join the album as Asylum Pyre, Muhurta, and Stone Horns, to really increase the grandeur of this fourth record as we travel across the world though the medium of intense modern prog metal. Grab your passport and make sure your seats are in the full and upright positions as this is journey through the existence of man and the experiences they leave behind.
A superb record but one that you need to make time for
Cairn is a pillar of the prog metal scene.
8/10
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