Julien at Electric Buffalo did an amazing review of our album Shroud. It is in French if you follow the link, so we’ll go ahead and post a translation here for you. Please excuse any awkward or incorrect translations, you can blame Google!
Paris is undoubtedly a big disembodied city(estate). It is enough to cross(spend) a few days in its inner suburbs to understand(include) the faintness(malaise) which crawls in these streets. No need to go to sniff at the cliché(picture) of cities(estates) in decomposition, an intermediate zone already shines on the disillusionment which reigns. Bagneux, Arcueil will do, between his (her,its) small quiet suburban districts and his(her,its) districts of buildings of social housing.
The Paris region is in constant works. Big construction sites(works) block the landscape permanently. Scaffolds block the view(sight), trucks-spinning tops cross-post(pour) meters-cubes of cement in sandy grounds filled with mud and with soiled water. Workers of any ethnic origins stir in this bric-a-brac of scrap and concrete. They extirpate of this place of which with difficulty to feed their families, in any suburban apartment or in migrants' home(foyer). These men(people), but also these women of color feed people of laborious who makes live in secret the beautiful office buildings and the department stores. They clean, build, watch all night or day shielded from the panels(signs) of construction site(work), before running away in the early hours or at nightfall towards their districts where they taste a thin life of rest. They meet on the road, the other way around, all the senior executives, the office workers who leave attacking(affecting) their working days, taken in the daily corks.
Paris and its region are a bristly fauna(crowd) of several workers' coats(layers) which cross(meet) and hate each other cordially. On one side, there is nice Parisian grouchy knocked out by their everyday life(daily paper) of consumerist tertiary workers, and the other one he(it) those that has the sun-tanned there, have him(it) tolerate the time(weather) of a sporting event, but that we hated cordially because they badly speak French, because they have still taken advantage of the generous social benefits of the country. It is necessary to have crossed(met) them in the street, on a corner(place) of pavement, the empty look, annoyed with deafening work, to understand(include) that they are only dogs mistreated by a despicable world.
And these uprooted souls roam in streets, attending to a hypnotic everyday life(daily paper), and meet other ghosts of the company(society). They are elderly, but also quarantenaires adrift. Their clothes are totally gone out of fashion, their hairstyles of another time(period). They have for only pleasure only the purchase of a scratchcard game or a package of cigarettes in the disgusting packaging. Their hope limits itself to a small unhoped-for sum of money which could improve the everyday life. They are not beggars, but it seems that the border between both worlds is extremely thin. They walk(work) still standing, while Roma to beg on the knees, the face against the ground, a tumbler in front of them, in streets and corridors of the subway
They roam in the middle of the migrant workers, between two PMU(HORSE-RACING BETTING) and two traders of sandwiches Turkish, among construction sites(works), and deposits(warehouses) of wild waste left at the edge of streets, between two abandoned(given up) cars. We feel that the poverty is close. She(it) roams permanently in this world suburbanite where everything became sad, at the edge of the break. The attractive buildings of the 70s, formerly marvels of architecture and modern comfort, are dirty from now on and badly maintained. Some already fell in projects of rehabilitation of districts. The small detached houses(flags) of the 90s, with small gardens and attractive fences(closes), are prisoners of this hell of noise, dust and grime. Some have the neglected air. Wooden shutters(sectors) are watered down, a car becomes mouldy in front of the door of the garage in the middle of wild grasses.
I hate this universe, it makes me sad, melancholic. We have the impression to be on the edge of the abyss. We are only a few kilometers away from the ring road(peripheral), the road border which marks the beginning of Paris the eternal, the city grotesque museum which spends its time to go into raptures over herself(itself). Slovens' handle(handful) claiming sometimes comes to move the mud under the feet of the city light, wasting(spoiling) very for a moment its beautiful perspectives of luxury department stores and trendy organised trips. The music disappears from these streets, the literature is egocentric, the paint(painting) does not exist any more. Paris is a caricature around which the wandering souls swarm to make this industrial, media and very trim world live, without having the slightest look for the laborious which have difficulty in surviving in these cages(goals) of concrete and steel.
For twenty years, Paris has to offer nothing musically. Between artists' concerts dated for conceited esthetes, and short-lived backfiring of good young people, the Parisian music is an artefact. It is the city of the fashion and the electro music, the french touch. The Rock died for quite a long time in these lands, provided that it had a tangible existence. Let us be honest, we believed in the Variations, then in Telephone, Little Bob Story and Trust a lot. But the Rock in France is a marginal thing, something that idealists' handle(handful) wants to make live, and that a band(strip) of mongrels considers useful to soil to shine in society.
We are if far from the reality of the Rock on this planet. The Rock died, it is a fact, at least commercially. If we look at the Top 200 of Billboard in the United States, or at the Top 100 of the British charts, both references absolved in terms of pop-culture, the Rock disappeared. It survives only by some highlights or republications of mythical albums: Beatles, Queen, Rolling Stones, Bowie. The new artists make an express passage, as Greta Van Fleet or Queens Of The Stone-Age. There are then the tours, under a shape more or less nostalgic. We visit Aerosmith, Def Leppard, Kiss or Deep Purple as we go to the museum: to see vestiges. We do the same thing in France, except that the old rooms (parts,plays) become scarce, and are often buried: Hallyday, Bashung... And are dug up with the same absence of propriety as for the Anglo-Saxon artists by interposed posthumous records(disks).
We're in 2018, and we have to go to New Orleans. The city still bears the scarifications of the Katrina catastrophe of 2005. This hurricane will have tested the works protecting the city of Mississippi, but also the most vulnerable areas. They are now open-air cemeteries. Are all the bodies evacuated? Are all victims relocated? We know little of it, because these were American browns who made the richness of New Orleans as much as its racist compost. The devastated neighborhoods are now abandoned. Their inhabitants will not return. And it is a part of the cultural richness of this city that disappears. New Orleans is not only the city of Jazz of the same name, festive, and Negro-spiritual. It is certainly its cultural base. But let's not forget the Warehouse, a room created in 1968, and that goes, like the great Ballroom of Detroit, hosting the best of the Rock of the years 70: Fleetwood Mac, Allman Brothers Band, Grateful Dead, Led Zeppelin, Humble Pie... the room has closed for a long time , but left memories.
Five characters decided to set up a Stoner-Metal band in this town. In this devastated landscape, these fellows want to defend the Rock, at least their vision, brutal, epic, and without concession. Travis Acosta holds the vocals, Rob Norton the bass, Chris Kain's drums. John Maracich and Chris Trentecosta hold the guitars. One more group, either..... His name is SpaceMetal, and I must admit that I had to go beyond this warm surname to discover their music. And she's excellent.
SpaceMetal practices a Stoner-Metal rare, squareded by two precise and inspired guitars, driven by a heavy and powerful rhythmic. Above this electric blaze flies an original voice, a bit nasal, just, but absolutely not hard'n'heavy. Acosta has the stamp almost mannered. It has an amazing expressive force.
Shroud is their second album in two years, and it has the characteristics of a fascinating disc. The title piece is a virulent heavy-song to the Black soul. We feel the pain of the desolate landscapes of the mud-ravaged city. "Birthright Baby" panics the tempo, the guitars get in harmony, reminiscent of a Thin Lizzy from the underworld.
These two beautiful granite steles open the door to the exceptional piece of the disc: "Forest Of Faith". We dive from the introductory feedback in a whirlwind of raging melancholy that will extend over eight minutes. The text is superb. He designs film plans of a cold and soggy fall in the large redwood forests at the Canadian border. The flowing river is this thread of life, the trees are the souls that haunt our lives. The guitars weave a carpet of steel, the chant evokes, martial and begging, this faith in existence that crumbles with disillusions. The Soli are abrasive, pelt the heart. They remind me so much of this sinister urban universe that is the Parisian suburbs, these lost souls who roam aimlessly in these sinister spaces.
"The Wheel" grunts from a bluesy riff, Acosta incantation. The second guitar is crying. The rhythmic rocking the atmosphere into a black rage. A Zeppelinienne flavor haunts the chorus. "Unify" is a more classic heavy uppercut that is found almost lukewarm view the quality of the previous pieces. But under his conventional atower lurks a great furious heavy-boogie.
"Forest of Faith" had placed high on the bar of excellence, but the disc still has fantastic pieces to reveal. "Cities Of the Dead" comes to sound the infernal charge. The title has a particular echo in the view of the group's origins. These cities of death are undoubtedly these neighborhoods devastated and abandoned with their lost souls. Anger reigns in this psychedelic doom-metal tornado.
"New Blood" is a ten-minute Dante construction made of terrifying threat riff nests. Acosta turns into a ship captain in the midst of the storm. The group welds a totally invincible metal monster. It is a deluge of steel that is falling. Chris Kain is a strong and inventive drummer, not boggling to the TOMS bearings. His loyal second Rob Norton blinds the space of his low rumbling. Maracich and Trentecosta tear off stone dust with their guitars. They also know how to open space, to bring air and light through open chords or epic choruses. SpaceMetal is not a new Mastodon, but a group of its own, with this finesse in the chord, this sense of emotion on very pure bases.
Shroud is undoubtedly a very large disc, almost perfect from the first to the last note. SpaceMetal has his style, which he owes to his inventive guitarists, and much to his charismatic stamp singer. This quintet has the resources, and new wonders to offer. All rights reserved
