Review of Spicilege by Belenos

There was a time when you wouldn't have held out any hope for a metal band from France but what with the likes of Gojira and Hacride around things are different now.

Belenos are a black metal band from Brittany who have been going for quite a while. SPICILEGE is a reissue of an original album from 2002 which has been remastered, and had 3 live bonus tracks and 4 unreleased versions added. They've even improved the artwork, it says here.

I've taken far too long writing this review but this has actually resulted in a more positive one than it started out as. Three weeks ago I was writing that Spicilege was routine black metal - pounding drums (albeit recorded muddily), screaming guitars, and screeching vocals sounding like they were recorded outside by the bike shed.

Although to a certain extent those things are still true, I now find them much more appealing than before.

And having listened to the album quite a few more times I can pick out nuances in each track which I couldn't when I'd only played it two or three times. This makes me wonder how many times should you listen to an album before you review it...but that's to ponder for another time.

The first three tracks on Spicilege are standard black metal stuff but do a job and do it well. The fourth track is all acoustic guitar and eerie chanting and its rather splendid. The next track starts with flute, not an instrument you hear very often on a black metal album.

Sixth track Mort Divine has more acoustic guitar to start with before it all kicks off. I think it was this track where I first acknowledged to myself that I was genuinely enjoying the album.

The live tracks are pretty fine and the unreleased tracks do enough different things to stand up on their own.

In the same way that the French do their cinema just a bit differently so French metal has a gallic slant that makes it interesting. I don't actually know why Belenos has re-released an album from ten years ago but its a pretty darn good one and if you get a copy, which I strongly suggest you do, you will - like me - be more than tempted to check out some of their other stuff and wonder why you'd never got into them before.