Band: Griffar (France) Album: Monastery (2011) Genre: Melodic Black Metal While closing in on 2,000 posts since we started and with a memory that isn’t what you’d call ‘solid’ I may well be completely fuckin’ wrong, but I think Griffar may be our first, or than at least one of the first, Black Metal outfits from France we discuss. And not just anywhere from France, but from the pinnacle of Frenchness: Paris. I bet these guys wear striped shirts and berets over their corpse paint all the fuckin’ time when they’re not on stage.

So, the Frenchies that are in the business of Melodic Black Metal have a debut album approaching its release. The first release in a long long time actually, as the last thing they released through official channels was an EP called Of Witches and Celts in, hold your breath, 2002. Apparently there has been some down time since too, but some four of the years covered were lost due to issues with finding a label, meaning Monastery was already composed back in 2007!

Can’t figure out why that is though, as Monastery is some pretty decent stuff. Not absolutely amazing, but definitely decent and full of interesting moments and moves.

On the cover is a female Jesus-type with blood dripping from a head wound over her nekkid tits. If it isn’t the music giving you a hard on, that imagery just might. Both the cover and the fact that the album’s called Monastery make it obvious is a role for religion, be it criticized or not, played in this record, but I can’t figure out which it is and I can’t make up from the lyrics either, because frankly they’re even more non-understandable than women.

Not that I mind. I never listen to lyrics anyway, unless they’re in German perhaps, because I like German, weird fucker that I am. But that doesn’t mean I’m not a sucker for vocals. I like a good portion of roaring on top of my riffs and beats, this should be no surprise. Griffar does a pretty good job at this, with Hellskrim’s vocals being both acidly raging and deeply growling, but mostly holding the ground somewhere in between.

I wouldn’t qualify them as Black Metal per se. And in fact, it’s like that with the rest of the music too. Sure, it’s on the sour, relentless, skin melting side, but it’s also not all too evil. More than often I’m hearing riffs that could’ve been transplanted into a Thrash songs without any risk of transplant rejection and the rest of it is pretty damn melodic, as you’d expect with Melodic Black Metal. But rather than melodic in a dark and evil sort of way, it’s also often focused on sorrow and melancholy, subtly so, but still.

Something not immediately evident from the album’s opening song, Blessed in Lava. With over nine minutes of playing time, it’s among the record’s lengthiest, together with the closing track. We’ve uploaded it for you because nothing from Monastery was yet online. You can clearly hear the Thrashy stuff I talked about, but the melodies in this particular song are most definitely not sorrowful, ‘cepting of course the bridge / outro part. Rather, the song has a major focus on groove and darkness.

A complete oddball on a Black Metal album is the closing song, Last World. It starts with what can only be described as Melodeath riffage with a very open feel. It’s got a high ass-kickery factor and the only thing Black Metal about it at all are the vocals that are on the more acid side here. Guitar-wise there’s a bit of tremolo picking throughout the song, but the majority really does give you that stoked hyped-up feeling you get from a lot of the catchier Melodeath.

Of all bands I know, the association that pops up in my head time and time again is that of Kataklysm. It’s just an amazingly pleasant song, complete with epic clean bridge with sweet fuckin’ solo guitar that eventually turns big and bad like in classic Metal.

In effect, I can say that Monastery is a pretty cool album, breaking boundaries between genres, or perhaps ignoring the fact that there ever were any, which is probably true anyway. The more I listen to this, the better it gets and the last song is just a big fuckin’ blast! It’s like a burst of torch light after twelve weeks of solitary confinement in a completely dark basement. There’s plenty of variation and stuff that’s out of Black Metal’s ordinary on this record. The French. What can you say, they do things their way!

My Grade: 8.5/10
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Tags: black, French, melodic, review, thrash

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