ETOILE FILANTE - Magnum Opus Caelestis
Northern Silence Productions
So the genre tagline for this band in the promo info was "cosmic black metal". My answer to that is NO, seriously no more weird out of bounds genre suggestions for sub-genres of black metal. Seriously years ago I actually walked up to some hiptard loser who uttered the words "transcendental black metal". He's lucky I didn't kill him. But seriously I'm really sick of bands/artists or whoever trying to separate themselves from the pack with a word or two when in reality they're not different at all from the established precedent.
After giving ETOILE FILANTE's debut full length a few listens I come away thinking it's simply ambient black metal. In other words it fills a void in the background while I can do many other things while still listening to it. This band or act if you prefer are from France. I was not surprised by that since the French black metal scene of late have been purveyors in post blackened aesthetics more than others. And honestly they're quite good at it. Personally I prefer their early days of blasphemy than their adventurism in the avant garde but hey they're French.
With all of that said this is a four song outing. The opening track is twenty two minutes in length. They do shave the song times down as the release flows on. As far as the whole "cosmic" thing goes, well they add plenty of synths to add a prog supplement to a simplistic black metal style. I'll give em their due, if David Gilmore was into black metal then he would of arranged some of the guitar solos. But the tremolo picked melodies work well on here. The synth arrangements are well done and never sound like filler. The vocals are tortured which is good.
In the end I keep thinking of BORKNAGAR minus the clean vocals and the Viking themes. But the progressive styles are in full on this release. While the opening long cut is an epic journey which is worth while to fold laundry to. I found the latter three shorter cuts to be the most interesting. For example "Koyaanisqatsi" is like blackened death doom with keyboards as the main melody maker. In the end this is what I use to call black metal to fall asleep to late at night. Turn it on, turn off the lights and pull the covers over.
https://northern-silence.de/
https://etoilefilante-northernsilence.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/Etoile.Filante.France
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