Metal

Metal Gainsbourg

  • Posted on 03/11/2012
  • /Under Musique

No, it’s not a joke. Swedish goth metalband Therion just released an album with covers of French 60s and 70s popsongs. Featuring a few Gainsbourg-tracks: Poupée de cire, Initials BB and Les Sucettes. Among tracks made famouse by Sylvie Vartan, Marie Laforet and others (see tracklist here). Therion’s not the first loud band to cover Gainsbourg (see FN Guns’ Les Sucettes, Rummelsnuff’s Bonnie & Clyde, for instance), but Therion’s versions are hilarious. Unintentionally, I guess, but still. Their ‘Initials BB’ is okay, but try ‘n keep a straight face while listening to this. Then imagine a corpsepainted, leather-clad crowd banging their heads to it. Even their fans aren’t sure what to think of it.
As a teen I listened to a lot of hardrock and metal (Judas Priest, Motörhead, Metallica, etc), but when I hear Therion, I think of the bestest metalparody ever.

Therion – Initials BB

Amesoeurs

  • Posted on 12/04/2010
  • /Under Musique

Guestpost! Bas Mars on Amesoeurs:

Amesoeurs combines fragile female voices with black metal. Sounds improbable? The band itself thought so too; they split up in 2009 due to ‘creative differences’. No suprise there, because black metal is everything but fragile, and fragile filles are as far away from evil and blackness as Belgium from winning the world cup soccer. But still, the French band Amesoeurs (with bandleader Neige from Peste Noir and Alcest, no novices in the world of black metal) tried to combine the two, and put also things like new wave and shoegaze in their blender. Well, to make a long story short: the ingredients differ too much to make it tasty all the time, but on several occasions Amesoeurs succeeds in making the perfect synthesis of the different genres, and on those moments the result really is superb. Best example – and best song on the album for that matter – is ‘Heurt’; completely original in combining full speed raging black metal with the fragile vocals from Audrey Sylvain (pictured). Magnificent. Most of the other songs don’t really combine the genres; black metal on one side, shoegaze/wave/postpunk on the other, fragile Audrey against screaming Neige. Surely very nice in its own way, but no real marriage between the two. The contrasts too big, therefore the inevitable break-up. A bit of a shame really, but we’ll always have ‘Heurt’.

Amesoeurs – Heurt