Grylle – Ergonants, Soufreteux, Cacochymes, Covidars

Fairy tale atmosphere, witch parties with bonfires in dark places with traditional instruments and macabre voices. No it's not a new Graham Masterton tale, nor is Blair Witch Project 3, it's the new Grylle album entitled "Ergonants, Soufreteux, Cacochymes, Covidars". Here we are dealing with a special, quite experimental French Black Metal band in the footsteps of Burzum, Aerekaer, Asarhaddon, Aggaloch, Alcest.

Grylle finds inspiration in the current social and political situation to write chronicles our time through a medieval approach and a satirical point of view. Something the listener notices in their music is that they don't use modern instruments, and this makes them sound more realistic! This trio from France plays their music, with unusual instruments, such as lute, flute, sarrazin guitars, traditional percussion, which when you listen to them as a whole, make you travel to the vast forest of their dark world!!!

We have 7 songs that are basically about diseases like plague that existed in medieval times, sadness and generally anything to do with death... Yes... it sounds so grim.. but in some strange way musically it gives you a wild/sweet feeling melody! The speeds vary between songs, sometimes they run non-stop and gallop across the wild snowy mountains, and other times they're so relaxed that they make you perch on the edge of the mountain and grasp the sky.

The first song, although I wouldn't call it a song, but an introduction to "Calling". It's a medieval hymn! At the end, the second one bursts out, quite melodic for the genre, with the macabre voice of the singer giving the rhythm and at various points the choir of darkness singing and concluding in a pagan way. Immediately after comes perhaps the fastest and at the same time melodic piece of the record, "Moribond Flétri d'Orgueil".

The fourth song of the record “Réservement de Confortale” is the best in my opinion, where it starts with a traditional style and with a speech of the French “magician” in the middle it changes and enters with an extremely “simple” melody on the guitar where and it ends… The remaining three songs basically move in this interesting medieval-theatrical pattern with sometimes fast speeds and sometimes slow and choral melodies.

Having listened to the record several times, I confess that these Frenchmen managed to win me over with their experimental music and their unique subject matter! If anyone wants to hear something different in the field of Black Metal I would definitely recommend it.

Themistocles Paraskevopoulos

                 8/10