BAHRRECHT - L’Aube Glacée

Bahrrecht - L’Aube Glacée (2016, Ketzer Records)

The Frenchmen of Bahrrecht are in the tradition of their fellow Anorexia Nervosa with a touch of the 1990’s Black Metal. Wanting to sound a lot more melodic than they were on Nuit de Neige back in 2012, L’Aube Glacée is tainted with the influence of Immortal in the latter years, Windir, and of course Dissection. Getting more of the first two for the song structures and the riffing of the third act mentioned, Bahrrecht however never delivers what is promised.

L’Aube Glacée was promising and I always tend to give a little bit more slack to recent bands that want to attack the revered genre that is 1990’s Black metal or, for some, the Second Wave of Black Metal. It gets a bit harder on them when they try to add that melodic element to the music. Except outstanding offerings like Windir, the Melodic Black Metal has never been a successful genre to start with. The Second Wave of BM was unique because it epurated most of the melodic side of the Earliest Metal incarnations.

So Bahrrecht’s music seems forced and the nine songs are very monochromatic and homogeneous. They don’t have much depth and they seem confined in three song patterns and that’s it. For DarkThrone back in 1993 it was perfect. But now, it’s been done thousands of times and there is nothing that’s distance them from the pack.

As I wrote earlier, this was an album I really wanted to like but I did not connect with it and I found it dull and it lacked a special flavor to make it standout. It was a good album on paper but with dozens of listens it hardly getting out of the average ranking.

5.0