Rating: 7.5

Country: France

Release Date: 2005

Record Label: Oaken Sheild/Adipocere Records

Track list:
1.L'autre Monde
2.Pantins de Dieu
3.Les Ombres du Passé
4.Mortifer Signum
5.Recipere Ferrum [mp3]
6.Requiem [mp3]
7.Virus Céleste
8.Corpus Christii

Band Website: Animus Herilis

Animus Herilis - Recipere Ferum

Daalberith - guitar
Dagons - vocals
Chaos Butcher - bass
Misroch - drums

To call this band the French answer to Gorgoroth seems to be a logical idea. Musically, there's a huge similarity here to 'Pentagram' – the intense speed (with periodic drops into midpaced rhythms), animalistic vocal exhortations, and reverb-drenched production draped with searing black melody is just too similar to ignore. Add to that the ugly OTT band pictures (all 4 members get their own ornate framed picture on the back cover, exactly in the old tradition of the early to mid-90's) and overall aura of pestilence which surrounds this entire album, and I'd assume/hope tha the band would consider such a comparison as something of a compliment.

So basically, this is a blistering skullfuck of an album. The entire thing reeks of Norway circa 1994, with the obvious exception of all the lyrics being in French. Of course, this makes it rather difficult for me to discern the lyrical content, but obviously there's a lot of death-worship and anti-christian sentiments to be found here, judging by the artwork (both external and internal) and my limited knowledge of the language. Which is all good, since the last thing we need is celestially-obsessed foppery or attempts at political ego-masturbation disguised as “high art” when it comes to raw, bestial black metal.

Animus Herilis have come up with an album which both sticks to tradition and blows away the common preconception that black metal in 2005 is creatively moribund. Far from it – this album contains plenty of vicious hooks and droning epic soundscapes, enough to make it an instant kick in the face. There's really not enough bands around doing this sort of thing well – sure, there are plenty of crappy Marduk clones around, but this is a completely different league. The ability to play extremely fast black metal without dissolving into a morass of complete boredom seems to be an ability the French scene hasn't lost sight of, and albums like this one simply serve to make this even more obvious. Clock this up on my “(un)pleasant surprises of 2005” list.

January 8th, 2006