Vésanie

With their new album, “Vésanie”, I did my first contact with a band that exists into Black Metal already thirteen years now, but having little activity by releasing only two demos and two full length albums. So, I refer to Azziard from France, which were formed in 2001 and they consist of five members. Their new album was released in February of 2014 and it contains eight compositions of overall duration of forty minutes. Someone would expect that a band which is together for so many years, it should manage to offer music of high quality. The band plays European and mostly Scandinavian Black Metal which will remind to the listener of well-known bands of the scene, while there are also some Death Metal references here and there.

Let’s start with the riffs which always are the alpha omega in an album.The riffs will create the images, the atmosphere and will catch the listener’s attention. This album contains mostly fast, dark and violent riffs of the Scandinavian school with references to rhythmic, solid Death. As you may have understood by the introduction the band doesn’t achieve to write interesting compositions as its riffs are commonplace and a thousand times played before. But apart from the lack of personality and inspiration, another problematic part of the album is also the structure of the tracks. Although their duration is of medium length, their structure combined with the interest that the riffs cause to the listener, make the tracks completely monotonous, without creating any feeling. I think that the moments that caught my attention were very few but they were a little drop of water into the desert, too little to quench the listener’s thirst.

On the other hand, the work that has been done for the instruments, for the production and the mixture of the album is good. The guitars have powerful and clean sound, while they are played with accuracy. The lines of the bass aren’t audible but they fill the sound quite well. The drums are brutal, played with much power with fast outburst, powerful, medium paced passages and stability. The vocals are harsh Black Metal vocals that you have listened to in dozens of other bands. They are quite monotonous, they don’t have a lot of expressing abilities and generally they are not of interest. The production is bass and clean, it tries to put out a powerful and massive sound and I think it manages to do so. All the instruments are balanced in the mixture, with the guitars to be a little louder. The lyrics are written in French but they are not contained in the promo that I received and I don’t know what they refer to.

The work of Azziard didn’t make any good impressions to me mostly because of the matter of the composition and the personality, which for me maybe is the most important element of an album. Due to the uninspired riffing and the bad structure of the tracks, hardly the listener will listen to the entire forty minutes of the album. I don’t know if I am strict with the band but when a band is together with a complete formation for thirteen years, the least that someone has to expect is to have found the style and its identity. It doesn’t worth to listen to it and under no circumstance don’t buy it. Avoid.