The city of New Orleans was founded by the French in the early 18th Century, and it has a long history of French-influenced culture in its food, music, and architecture. From the perspective of a metal fan, the place called NOLA gave us one of the most fruitful and original underground scenes of the last 25 years, most notably bringing about the birth of sludge and injecting metal with a distinctly southern vibe. These bands reflected a different, but no less honest, side of their city and the South as a whole, and have since influenced countless bands within the underground.
So really, it was only a matter of time before a French band stood back, reflected on the cultural relationship, and said, “Wait, we want in.” Enter Glorior Belli, who quickly gained notoriety in the French black metal scene thanks to animalistic albums such as Manifesting the Raging Beast. They really found their own sound with 2009’s Meet Us at the Southern Sign, a swaggerific slab of nasty that relished in the addition of some serious twang to the band’s already thickly-riffed black metal.
The Great Southern Darkness furthers this merging of the band’s two stylistic sources by adding emphasis to both: it is somehow more blackened and more southern than Meet Us at the Southern Sign. Keeping the “southern” in the album title may seem a bit gimmicky to some, but who cares? This is the sound of Glorior Belli telling those people to get bent by filtering the whiskey-soaked American South through the sophistication of French black metal. And as if they didn’t have enough of a cocky saunter, they added just a hint of a confrontational punk attitude to the songs, which furthers the NOLA connection (at least to this guy).
The range of approaches offered herein will seem a mite schizo to the uninitiated, but Glorior Belli’s solid song structures – and their collective volcanic vehemence – aids transitions in feeling natural. The Great Southern Darkness has a veritable deluge of gritty, brash and twangy black metal riffs, simplistic, almost black/punk chord chugging, straight blues metal lines, and even bits of Dissection-esque tremolo-tinged melodic black metal. The fact that “Negative Incarnate” juxtaposes the latter against a jam section straight out of a Down album is a massive credit to the band’s confidence in their material. There are more than a few moments when their sudden shifts call to mind Soilent Green, but instead of shifting from grind to sludgy blues, they go from black metal to, well, blackened blues. (And for the record, Glorior Belli beats the living shit out of a certain blackened band that is actually from NOLA.) A few songs feel more wholly black metal (“Secret Ride to Rebellion”) and a couple nearly totally blues (the smooth title track), but it is the combination the band provides over the entire album that makes these 48 minutes too begrimed to resist.
But make no bones about it, despite the stylistic stew The Great Southern Darkness is still first and foremost a black metal record. The guitar tone, balanced-but-raw production (which is notably more rotten than their previous offering), vocal delivery and overall atmosphere are 110% black fucking metal. However, one of the band’s really defining characteristics helps the music shed some of the rigged feel so associated with the genre. This is the kind of layered looseness and jammed feeling, with the triple action of lead guitar, rhythm guitar, and very well-written bass lines offering countermelody (or counter-anti-melody) to each other. Passages in “The Foolhardy Venturer” and “The Science of Shifting” offer some of the more warped riffs while also showing off Glorior Belli’s cohesion as an instrumental unit. At these times, the rhythm guitar takes more of a background role than does the bass, as the latter dances up and down in its own path, often offering melody even when the rest of the music becomes chaotic. Drumming from G. (Gionata Potenti, J./Infestvvs’ 11 As In Adversaries bandmate) shows an excellent understanding of all styles the band chooses to take on, helping to maintain order as the tracks shift.
Look, it’s highly doubtful that Glorior Belli was sitting around spinning Sewn Mouth Secrets or When the Kite String Pops when they suddenly had a career revelation. There’s a distinct possibility that the whole NOLA-France connection was never even thought of, but it’s fun to consider these possibilities, and if they did happen to think this way, well they nailed it. The Great Southern Darkness may not quite meet the excellence of its two predecessors, but it’s really damn close, and different enough to stand on its own. Most importantly, it solidifies Glorior Belli as a consistent and unique force to be reckoned with, and also might just cause a few NOLA diehards to lend an ear to the vast sphere of French black metal.
Whether the whole Southern thing is a gimmick or not, it works, rocks hard, and demands your filth-hungry ears.
