La Division Mentale - L'Extase Des Fous (2007)

With Deathspell Omega, Peste Noire and Blut Aus Nord all dropping full lengths, 2007 is quickly become the year for French black metal. Not content to let their more well known comrades hold all the limelight, we now have La Division Mentale adding L'Extase Des Fous to the fray. Loathe as I am to drop into journalistic simile mode, there really is no better method by which to describe this album. Imagine if you will, Sigh and Aborym collaborating on a Dødheimsgard covers album. Not only this, but they've decided to record it in a mental institute, with demonically possessed French children as a backing choir and Satan's Gameboy as a drum machine.

With intro, outro and inbetween utilizing the "sonic warfare" approach akin to Gallows Gallery, you may be asking yourself "Can I play with Madness?" The answer of course is no, because he'll strap you to a table made of dried feces, masturbate into your ear canal and pour fire ants in your urethra. This is off the deep end, utterly disturbing industrial black metal. You have been warned.

From the moment 'La Gale de Mon Passe' spews forth you're aurally assaulted with a sonic tidal wave of distorted guitars, demonic, barking vocals and a relentless drum barrage. Before there's time to recover in slips one of few recognizably orthodox riffs on the entire album and then we're off to lala land again. A tumultuous tornado of dischordant riffage carries 'Satan Inside', backed by an eery Mario coin capture sound, where the coins in question could be Mannoroth's testicles. Celestial dispersions of clean male, female and childlike vocals in native French drift through the album, like spirits of the dead trapped within the compositions. In essence, L'Extase Des Fous is the aural equivalent of Slakemoth effluence. A nightmarish cachophony of bleak industrial soundscapes, dragged towards a hellish maw by the hellicoid distortion of guitars stringed with demon sinew.

10/10

Soulless - Forever Defiant (2007)

It's rare that an American band can truly capture the form and feel of Sweden's Golden Age of melodic death metal, generally the attempts devolve into metalcore masturbation and tacky moshpit manipulation. The third album from Ohio's Soulless is a monster of an effort, however, a firm yardstick across the knuckles of their pedestrian peers. It's almost as if this one album makes up for all the garbage the US has been spewing into this genre for nearly a decade.

Soulless does it all correctly. Jim Lippucci's vocals snarl with the proper dosage of Lindberg venom, the songs are well-structured, just about every riff here meticulously crafted and applied with melodic grace amidst a technical death-thrashing blunt force trauma. The result isn't just another notch in the belt of the melodeath genre, but an album that will appeal to most fans of the metal riff. Technical enough to keep the interest of basement virtuosos aplomb, but savagely catchy enough to stand alongside the Rusted Angels and Jester Races of the world as a timeless celebration of the carefully balanced attack so intrinsic to this style.

Each of the 14 original tunes is consistently superb, you are getting a lot of meat for your money. Among my favorites were "The Price of Life" and "As Darkness Dawns", the latter of which has some of the best riffs I've heard this year. The band is not above a break in the action such as the great acoustic piece "D-Composition", and the album is capped off with a cover of "Kill the King".

Amidst the endless, leaking, stagnant vats of Swedish wanna-be Black Dahlia Earmurder porridge in the States, Soulless have crafted a timeless entry into a genre many have given up for dead. The next time you are shuffling through your records, fawning over Heartwork and Slaughter of the Soul and wondering why 'they don't make 'em like these anymore', stand yourself corrected. Forever Defiant may just be the greatest American melodeath album I have ever heard. It actually matters.

10/10

Deathspell Omega - Fas - Ite Maledicti, in Ignem Aeternum (2007)

" Fantasies of droll dreams confusedly danced about; hybrid creations, formless mixtures of men, beasts and utensils; monks with wheels for feet and cauldrons for bellies: warriors, in armours of dishes, brandishing wooden swords in birds' claws; statesmen moved by turnspit gears; kings plunged to the waist in salt-cellar turrets ..."

10/10

Annunaki - Throne of the Annunaki (2007)

Graaaaaaaaa! Ignore the badly drawn album cover this is total blackened-death-thrash dismemberment! New Jersey's Annunaki are a whirlwind riff machine, blasting their way through a simply stunning debut album. Released back in February I'm assuming this has earned them a coveted support slot for Immortal's upcoming east coast appearance. Featuring the drummer from 80s thrash metallers Blood Feast this album is non-stop wall to wall balls out metal. Kicking off with the kick to the face that is the tremolo fueled 'Through Chaos', it charges into a deathly riff breakdown before storming forward, kicking down your door and raping you in the eyesocket. As if that wasn't enough a banshee wailing, 80s style solo tears off your limbs and beats you to death with them. And then 'Eucharist' kicks in. And does it again. And again. And again. 'March Of The Militia Of The Dead', 'Blunt Scalpel Extraction', by the end of the album I felt as if I'd been face fucked by Cthulhu and given a chainsaw hand job. Equal parts Dark Funeral, Coroner and even a little Melechesh this is easily one of this years classics. I'm in danger of overstating this album so I'll stop. Get it. Get it now.

10/10