Transcendance
Csejthe may ring a bell in the head of some readers as he might know where this name comes from. However Elisabeth Bathory should ring some bells at least because her name was used quite often in black metal spheres. Csejthe is the name of the castle Elisabeth lived in and because the Canadians wanted to make music that deals with her topic, they must have thought its a good idea to name themelves after it.
Transcendance is the fourth record the Canadians release, their debut was released two years before and one split and one demo even before that. I can not tell you, if the lyrics of their latest record are still dealing with Ms. Bathory, as they are kept in French which I can not understand.
The EP consists of four songs and it has a total playing time of estimated 21 minutes. The first track Souterrains creates an oppressive, dazing atmosphere through the usage of humming guitar rhythms and buzzing melodies. The vocals sound like someone is growling in the basement of a building, with the vocalist one room besides the microphone. That means, the vocals are quite resounding and silent.
Whereas the first song tried to spread some cold, the second song Déréliction is sounding much warmer and more harmonic. The vocals are still resounding and silent like in the first song, sometimes even hard to notice at all. Sadly, their attempt to create a melancholic atmosphere is destroyed the moment the riff which is played between the verses is kicking in.
The third song also keeps the style of the neglected vocals, which is quite sad, especially as the clean vocals are better implemented. They tend to use some synthesizer sounds in the last two songs and some female/male backing vocals in addition to that. The last song is a pure instrumental song, mostly shaped through the sound of a piano.
They never really mess with the song structure in terms of variation in tempo or dynamic, so you could say they are quite simple. The production is acceptable although they tried to get the vocals somewhat raw, but kept the rest quite clean which is a bit of a mess.
Conclusion:
Transcendence is a quite good EP, that proves one more time that canadian black metal does not have to hide itself. The production is the biggest flaw on this EP, since it is quite upsetting that they kind of “ruined” the atmosphere they could have created. The riffs are quite good, although there is sometimes a slightly déja-vu effect. Nonetheless the EP is quite solid and discretely and there might be some really cool stuff from this guys in the future.
Rating: 72/100
Released in: March 2010
Tracklist:
| 1. | Souterrains | 05:18 | |
| 2. | Dérélictition | 06:55 | |
| 3. | Transcendance | 05:46 | |
| 4. | Mémoires | 02:51 | |
| Total playing time | 20:49 | ||
2 Comments to “Csejthe – Transcendance [EP]”
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nilgoun says:
Ich würd die Aussage allgemein auf französisch sprechende Länder ausweiten, nicht zuletzt weil man das so ein wenig anhand der Reviewzahlen hier untermauern könnte
Klingt interessant… da werd ich wohl mal reinhören. In letzter Zeit kommen grade aus Kanada einige ziemlich gute Bands.