(written by Islander)
We’re about to lead you off our usual well-beaten paths, or rather the French band Tragos will do that through their debut album Bellicum that will be released by Fetzner Death Records on March 13th.
Gazing at the album’s cover art will give you a hint about the music within, which is an exhilarating alchemy of savage and slaughtering death metal and classical elegance influenced by baroque composers such as Matteo Carcassi, Fernando Sor, Scarlatti, and Bach.
If you’re unfamiliar with Tragos, you might now be imagining heavy doses of keyboards or synthesized violins or cellos, or perhaps the kind of over-the-top bombast that some classically inclined death metal bands put forward, but you’ll learn that’s not what Tragos are up to. You might also be wondering how well their unusual fusion of beastliness and elegance will work, and you’ll get your answer (it works exceedingly well) through our complete premiere of Bellicum today.
It’s commonplace for bands and/or labels to premiere individual songs in advance of a record’s release (hell, we help them do that every day!), but some curmudgeons refuse to listen to anything from an album they might be interested in until they can hear the whole thing from start to finish. Now everyone can do that with Bellicum, so let’s begin at the beginning.
Across the course of the album Tragos explore many forms of human torment, and the album opener “Lethal Suspiro” concerns tragic sacrifice. It isn’t one of the individual songs that Tragos and Fetzner Death premiered before today, but it’s a fitting first chapter in this musical pageant.
Immediately, the swelling music evokes a spritely classical dance and then seamlessly morphs into a much heavier and more sinister affair. The music still seems to dance, but the riffing has a scarring tone and the slithering and darting lead-guitar notes, which seem to moan and wail, channel distress.
Gargantuan guttural roars, hammering drums, and swarming fretwork enhance the song’s dark ferocity, and a swirling and soaring guitar solo both seizes attention and enhances the music’s dark mood of despair. You’ll also find that, in addition to being both devilish and downcast, both elegant and beastly, the song’s motifs turn out to be hooks that will get lodged in your gills.
From there, Tragos romp and ravage through 11 more songs. Those songs feature lots of fast-flying fretwork, including bubbly bass performances which are on par with the nimbleness and nuanced filigrees of the guitars. The technical skill of the string-slingers is quite impressive, but the dexterity is indeed devoted to a much more baroque tapestry of sensations than anything you’d find in the realms of technical death metal.
Where most extreme metal bands who brandish classical music influences often manifest those influences through the deployment of symphonic synths and other keyboards, Tragos have embedded them in the guitar work, and the interplay of guitar and bass. The moments at the outset of a few songs when Tragos bring in such facets as operatic vocals or symphonic strings are quite brief; it’s the guitars and bass that do the dancing, darting, prancing, and weaving.
While the drums aren’t as prominent in their sound as the guitars and vocals, they also clearly demonstrate careful thought, moving not only the momentum but also the percussive patterns in ways that underwrite and enhance the fretwork embellishments and mood changes.
And yes, even in the most fiendishly frantic songs (and most of them do tend to be frantic), the music morphs in ways that seem to manifest torment, grief, and horror. They sound devilish but the melodies then seamlessly shift, beginning to sound morbid, desolate, or diabolical in a much more menacing way.
Those humongous guttural growls usually dominate the vocals, but they frequently explode into raging howls that go on for harrowing durations, and terrorizing yells and screams make an appearance in the vicious and venomous closer “Opus Carnifex”.
Speaking of length, one other interesting divergence between Tragos’ songwriting and other extreme bands that claim classical influences is that Tragos’ creations are relatively brief. Only two songs on Bellicum tip past four minutes, and three of them don’t reach the three-minute mark. This works in their favor, so as to give your head a quick chance to slow its spinning before the next song starts whirling it again.
And with that, we’ll leave you to experience the savagery and sophistication of Bellicum for yourselves:
TRAGOS is:
Kevin – Vocals, Lyricist
Cédric – Guitars, Songwriter
François – Bass
Laurent – Drums
Bellicum was recorded and mixed by Nekomata Home Productions and mastered at Studio TSR. The cover art was created by Thibault Delferiere. The album is available on digipak CD, cassette tape, and digital formats.
ORDER/STREAM/FOLLOW:
Digipak: https://tragos.bigcartel.com/product/tragoss-debut-album-bellicum-on-digipak
Cassette Tape: https://tragos.bigcartel.com/product/tragos-bellicum-tape-version
Digital: https://fetznerdeathrecords.bandcamp.com/album/tragos-bellicum
Merch: https://tragos.bigcartel.com/category/merch
Spotify/iTunes: https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/tragos1/bellicum
Social medias & others streaming platforms: https://linktr.ee/tragos666