Obtained this one through
CanwllCorfe-
Gris - Il Était une Forêt...
I'd actually been planning to get this for awhile before Canwll got paired up with me, so I was happily surprised when he threw it my way when I mentioned I wanted to get into more atmospheric black metal.
In the case of this album, atmospheric is an understatement: this is up somewhere in the moon's orbit, which is awesome. Although not too quiet,
Il Était une Forêt burns nice and slow compared to much of its ilk at first glance.
But anyway, six tracks later and the album already over, I found that Gris haven't done anything I haven't heard before: they've simply taken the black metal aesthetic and refined it through a doom metal sift, which is something you see a lot these days. However, the experience moves from satisfactory to excellent in the album's more striking moments, such as the wholly classical
La Dryade or the opening acoustics of
Cicatrices that reminded me of early Ulver. Such things are not nearly as common in the scene, and hence I was ultimately drawn in due to that.
In conclusion, black metal works best for me when you get the opportunity to peek behind the curtain of noise and see what wicked things are at work beneath the surface. And in that respect, Gris have succeeded splendidly. Thanks Can!
