Christ Shows Mercy, the Frenchmen Don't
Usually I
don’t make a practice of creating any musical summing up due to year’s end, but
one thing is as true as steel: my last 2015 shopping refers to classic heavy
and old school death titles in most cases. One of those exceptions is a debut
(?) album of French band Boys First Time, although it wasn’t ordered by me,
just arrived as a gift from the releasing label Polish Deformeathing. So I took
my headphones, put ‘play’ button and the day turned into… Yeah, and it wasn’t
the same. It’s even hard to describe the music in a proper way. Grind core?
Math core? Technical death? Experimental? The bag is filled with many elements
and directions, but is it an edible dish? The music clocks in 25 minutes only,
ten short tracks keep the style of… Yep, I found some comparisons to The
Dillinger Escape Plan or Converge. Well, I can’t verify it because these bands
are not on my shelf, however French tunes take me to Soilent Green dimension
sometime.
All right, I
am forced to face a volcano of sounds and emotions. Being spat by broken instrumental
structures and omnipresent complexity, with wide-open eyes I absorb striking
arhythmicity, fidgetiness and good taste negation. But, it’s easy to fish out
short clever melodic parts in sound avalanche (“Populate”) or superb (?!)
melodious gap in “Ecstatic on the Brink”. For sure closing track tries to step
aside a bit, not only due to its length (almost five minutes), but from 1:35
sounds go into dreamy, visionary areas, then the whole gets surprising guitar simplification
with keyboards blots in the background. Vocally Olivier Delecroix proposes wide
range singing: from cool clean calm vocalism especially in “Run from the Exit”,
to the most extreme frantic guttural forms and screams, excepting pig squeals. The
music; it is planned, just a conscious work by good and efficient musicians;
thus it became interesting and very varied piece where there's honestly not a
second that bores me. Just like a rollercoaster: riffs are changing unceasingly
showing strange and bizarre tunes more than once, rhythm section has also its
visible killing touch making the whole a complete thing to grind my armless senses.
It’s hard
to choose the leader, it is impossible I guess, much easier it will be saying
about the sickest one in the roster. Yyy… No. It makes no sense, as I swallow the
whole without a drink. Worthy to say about general ability to mistakenness: from
the band’s name suggesting rather a boys band, then the front cover being a
good picture for your local vicarian to the releasing form itself: nice-looking
digipak unleashed by small underground label and really decent production. Even
first forty mysterious seconds may lead into error. And for sure this album isn’t
for a common metal fan. For me: the biggest musical surprise in 2015. But it
seems it is the only their missile, as there’s no information about any band’s activity.
Or maybe am I wrong and I’ll be shocked one more time in future. Anyway, Relapse
guys should find them and sign a deal.
And man, even
if I don’t like French cooking, this dish is absolutely gorgeous. Bon appétit!
85/100
-Tlacaxipehualiztli
(written in January, 2016)
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