Aldaaron - Suprême Silence Review

It is raining like Kyogre just dropped out of the sky as I type this review (now where’s my Master Ball…), the thundering is so loud that they set off a few extremely sensitive (and annoying) car alarms, and the lightning bolts are thankfully missing me by a few inches because of my better karma this lifetime round (I’ve been trolling trolls on the Internet, altruism is emanating from my toothy grin). But I’d rather be out there and catch a cold so that I can take a day off from work tomorrow, because I’m wasting precious time writing about this meh record which sonically replicates the phenomenon of heavy rain in the comfort of my own home, only without the day off from work tomorrow. Argh!

Aldaaron may be from France, but they are nothing like their experimental brethren, Deathspell Omega and Blut Aus Nord. Pushing the boundaries of known sub-genres is clearly not their aim and forte, for they peddle generic-sounding pagan black metal that brings to mind despondent imagery such as desolate landscapes being covered in the aforementioned heavy rain, but which quickly fades into oblivion because of a lack of variety in the musical techniques utilized. Black metal as a sub-genre has been generally musically stagnate since the early 2000s, and this phenomenon’s occurrence was hard to avoid; simply because it is corollary to the concomitance of the general reluctance to move on from the self-deprecating and backwards nature of black metal’s roots in relation to mankind’s flaws and the great rate at which they are expanding everyday with paradigm shifts in socially-acceptable morality due to speedy technological advancements. Luckily, certain bands such as the slightly more senior and Ukrainian Drudkh are still keeping pagan black metal interesting, and by that, I mean Drudkh’s utilization of a variety of musical techniques without making their music sound too incoherent and hence, indigestible.

Unlike Drudkh however, Aldaaron overuses the art of black metal tremolo picking and a generally uninteresting drumming pattern that goes dat-dat-dat-dat-dat-dat on most of the tracks [It’s called “a blast beat”. – AMG]. Acoustic guitar interludes are almost completely absent, with the only instant of it being heard in the introduction of the first track, “Renégat”. It’s a great musical device to use in the sub-genre of pagan black metal, because it is very effective at conjuring that “yearning” mood while offering a calm respite from the loud tremolo picking passages, but it’s sadly under-utilized by Aldaaron. Ambient keyboard accompaniment is a rare occurrence too, only appearing twice to inject a much-needed transcendent quality into Aldaaron’s music in the tracks “L´Homme Souverain” and “Suprême Silence”, which are too little to bring you places—kinda like a cheapskate budget airline tour package advertisement you’d skip in a heartbeat at the travel fair.

You want your pagan black metal to bring you places, and not make you feel keenly aware that you are trapped at home or on the train listening to pagan black metal (which, logically speaking, you would be doing so). It sucks to be a younger band playing in an established style, but we all know that the world is a harsh place; and evidently, the irresponsible metal “critics” on the Internet make the online world an even harsher place, harsher than Diablo’s Chaos Sanctuary on Hell difficulty.

Well, that’s it. Time for me to go out into the rain! I might just be able to make it in… Oh darn, it stopped. Damn you, Aldaaron.