By Jonny Bakes
Not many people will know that at one point I was pretty fluent in French. Okay, so I might be pretty rusty these days but that doesn’t stop me having a bit of an affinity for the language though. However, I’m sure that many do know that I’m pretty fond of both black metal and folk metal, so you can imagine that I jumped at the chance to check out a band who combined all three of those things! That’s how I found myself getting lost in ‘Chroniques de l’Insurrection’ (or ‘Chronicles Of The Uprising’)
This is a debut album from Paydretz, a folk/black metal project from Western France that focuses on the war in the Vendée and the Chouannerie. So, hold up, not only am I getting a combination of two of my favourite genres, but it’s also a historical conflict concept album? Well, excuse me while I change my pants because I think I’ve reached peak excitement already and I haven’t even hit the first track yet! For the uninitiated, these “wars of the West” were the counter revolutions led by the royalists during the period of the French revolution… think of it as a bit of an anti-Les Miserables I guess. So an interesting viewpoint to bring across for sure!
‘Chroniques de l’Insurrection’ is a tapestry made up of so many different elements, there’s dark and heavy black metal, traditional French songs, epic melodies, folk instruments, spoken passages and so much more crammed into this one-hour epic chronicling the side of the French Civil War that no one really talks about. Paydretz takes the stories of clashing forces in the West of France and brings them into the modern age to show the darker side of the late 1700s and that it wasn’t all ‘Do You Hear the People Sing?’. If you understand French, then you’ll have a slight advantage, but I wouldn’t say it’s compulsory to enjoy this album. In fact, I think most people will struggle not to get sucked in to this enrapturing retelling of what were, at times, pretty horrific scenes. If I were to try and draw a likeness out to give you an idea of what you’d be in for, I think the closest example has to be to imagine Eluveitie but blacken it up a bit and you’d be in the right sort of ballpark.
There’s so much going on in this album, with some tracks only really making sense in the context of the album (like ‘La Chasse Aux Loups’), that it’s pretty difficult to pick out any real top tracks. Really this is an album that needs to be listened to in its entirety, but I know some of you have pretty short attention spans so here’s one for you to try out to get a taste of what the album has to offer – ‘Sous la Bannière Blanche’. This is a pretty good example of that Eluveitie vibe I was getting, with a dominating guitar melody and a song structure that contrasts verses of harsh male vocals with a chorus of hauntingly beautiful female vocals. It takes a little while to pick up the folk elements, but they’re there in the form of pipes/whistles that play over the sounds of combat towards the end of the track before it pairs the two vocalists together for the climax!
For me, ‘Chroniques de l’insurrection’ is a serious hit. In fact I went straight out and pre-ordered the physical copy on Bandcamp before I’d even finished the review! I know I keep coming back to them, but the similarity to Eluveitie is pretty evident not only in the style but also in the commitment to document stories of conflict that otherwise would go unheard (and, as an aside, Anna Murphy did provide her hurdy gurdy skills on one of these tracks too!) The whole album is an experience to repeat over and again, and frankly I’m a little bit jealous of those who get to listen to this for the first time on release. All in all, c’est magnifique!
- ‘Chroniques de l’insurrection’ is out now. You can get your copy HERE.
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