Oriflamme ~ L'egide Ardente (album review) ... Vive le Canadian Death Metal Revolution!

Style: black metal, death metal, drone metal
Label: Sepulchral ProductionsYear: 2021
Home: Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Members: Verbouc ~ vocals/bass/keyboards
Mrtyu ~ guitars
Mortheos ~ drums

Oriflamme's debut is a brutal 45 minutes of pure death metal that will melt your face, but also grab your ears with interest. Extreme pounding double bass, riffing-like-your-life-depends-on-it guitar parts a la Cradle of Filth, a thick wall of sound & growled guttural vocals, though to their credit not undecipherable screams. All the pieces are here you'd expect from this style of music. Though, in French, with only one English title in "Sacrifices!". I don't speak French, nor do I have a translation of the lyrics or take the time to translate titles like "Ultime rempart", "Une nuite sans fin", "Un mal ancien", but I figure lyrically this is playing ball with all the same pieces that slab of metal like this usually has in play. Yet, there is one thing that pulls this album apart from other albums in this genre. No, it is not the French, as that's only unique from my English south of the border perspective, but I listen to lots of non-English music & lived abroad for many years. The interesting part is how they keep the growling vocals to a minimum to move to the focus on the music, which morphs slowly & unpredictably. This is where your ears are going to take interest. At times its raging black metal, but other times its drone meets sludge metal. One guitar line will be blasting away, while underneath it some instrument is taking up an almost unnoticed counter rhythm, while the parts eventually transform into something else before you've realized it. I'm reminded of Terry Riley, John Cage, John Adams & Phillip Glass if they should happen to play power chords on over-driven guitars. "Un Mal Ancien", a highlight of the album, is a good example of this where the guitar riffs away while underneath the bass creates this low droning rumble that comes & goes, before the whole thing settles on a groove different than where it started. Its a fascinating bit I confess I didn't hear on initial listen, as I found myself distracted while listening. So, let your ears listen to this band, don't just put them in the background.