(written by Islander)
On June 26th of this year Transcending Obscurity Records will release the third album by the French band Verdun, and their first one in a long seven years. Its name is Abyssal Womb. As the label describes, it represents an evolution of the band’s music into “a form of blackened sludge with a dissonant edge” — “mind-numbingly heavy yet catchy and direct, making it highly effective and memorable.”
Those are good descriptors. Verdun’s new music is humongously heavy and powerfully channels an array of damaged and dangerous moods with riff-driven compositions that get stuck in the head. Moreover, the songs incorporate contrasting melodic accents that are ethereal in tone, and the drum rhythms will routinely get a listener’s muscles jumping.
Two infectious songs from the album have already surfaced (and eventually we’ll have something to say about them below), and now we premiere a third one — “La Lame et la Chair“.
“La Lame et la Chair” reveals how well Verdun have dialed in their sound to create imposing gravity and towering menace. The opening riff, which both blares and moans, straddles a line between abrasiveness and clarity, and between ominous hazard and agony.
Verdun pair that with a muscle-triggering rhythmic groove that benefits from a very weighty bass tone and skull-popping snare beats. When the screamed vocals finally arrive, as the music begins to dismally heave and morbidly throb, they’re absolutely scalding.
Throughout the song, the grooves remain irresistible — this is a gut-puncher and a neck-wrecker for sure — and they become even more compulsive in the song’s back half, when the pace ticks up following an eerily bereft interlude. The guitars vividly pulsate and the bass brutishly clangs and growls, but the band continue infiltrating bits of grieving melody. And the vocals remain frighteningly intense.
We also want to call your attention to two previously released songs from Verdun’s new album — “Funeral of the Cosmic Knight” and “Silent Witness“.
The mid-paced, lurching march of “Funeral Of The Cosmic Knight” is immensely heavy and indeed funereal in the earthshaking weight of its gloom — but this is a cosmic knight whose funeral we’re witnessing, and so shrill guitars (and/or keys) shiver and wail above the staggering low end.
The screamed vocals are again utterly crazed in their throat-ripping intensity, and they provide another high-end tonal contrast to the rhythm section’s subterranean immensity. Another contrast emerges when the bass begins musing and the band set free a startling array of weirdly shimmering and grieving seizure-like tones.
The music overflows into a dense and disconcerting sonic maelstrom of harrowing intensity, but the listener is rescued by a reprise of the song’s immense (and muscle-moving) opening phase — though the vocals remain far beyond rescue.
By now it will come as no surprise that “Silent Witness” is also a very heavy beast. It moves forward like a dying leviathan groaning toward the graveyard of its kind — but surrounded by glittering sonic lights that are as unearthly in their own way as the elephantine creature they surround.
It will also come as no surprise, because it’s a hallmark of this album, that the beats are reflexively compulsive (your muscles will jump again!) and the tormented vocals seem capable of stripping the paint from your walls if played loud enough.
Ragged, ringing, and emotionally damaged melodies come and go, seeming to beseech and to weep during intervals between the song’s grim, powerhouse surges and head-rattling beats.
VERDUN is:
David Sadok – Vocals
Jay Pinelli – Guitars
Florian Celdran – Bass
Geraud Jonquet – Drums
Transcending Obscurity will release Abyssal Womb on vinyl LP, jewelcase CD, and digital formats, with T.O.’s usual broad array of apparel and other merch, all of it featuring the cover art of David Sadok (Jaxartattooer). It comes recommended for fans of Drofnosura, Coffinworm, Thou, and Indian.
PRE-ORDER:
https://verdun-label.bandcamp.com/album/abyssal-womb
https://us.tometal.com/
https://eu.tometal.com/
VERDUN:
https://facebook.com/weareverdun
https://instagram.com/we_are_verdun