Nowadays, when more and more black metal bands are popping out of Scandinavia and when the amount of them seems to excuse their weak quality, it's pretty damn good to see that black metal can be executed in an excellent fashion elsewhere too.

SETH is the perfect example of this. Emerging from France, SETH has managed to come up with an album that is needless to say, brilliant. The first great aspect/originality of this band is that they sing in french! Yes, you heard me. All the 6 songs on this album are sung in their mother-tongue. (there are 7 songs actually, but one of them is an instrumental)

On to the music, SETH have put together a blend of black metal combining speed (listen how "La Quintessence du Mal" blasts off after the spoken intro in the beginning), great melody (Hymne au Vampire acte I & II) and incredibly dark emotion which can be heard on "Le Cercle de la Renaissance". The lyrics for the aforementioned song are the most profound ones of the whole album in my opinion. (yes I understand french)

There are synths on this album, but they're used in a very wise manner since they never over-dominate the songs.

Vocalist Vicomte Vampyr Arkames (hmm..nice name pal) has a very distinctive voice. It doesn't sound like the typical black metal rasp, even though his voice is 110% black metal for sure.

The skills of the musicians in this band (hails to mr. Heimoth!) are excellent and all the instruments can be heard clearly since the sound is pure brilliance too. The artwork rules aswell!

My only slight complaint about this album are the credits. Vocalist Vicomte hails about 200 people (mostly norwegians) whilst drummer Alsvid thanks "himself and ONLY himself"...nice contrast I'd say (bwahahaha)... anyway, "Les Blessures de l'Ame" is one hell of an album!

9.5/10

© 2000 naargrim