(written by Islander)

It’s tempting to think of the French artist Hazard as a musical Jekyll and Hyde. In his longest-lived solo project, Les Chants Du Hasard, he is committed to “revisiting nineteenth-century symphonic music in the light of a black metal attitude” (to quote the label I, Voidhanger Productions). In his more recent solo project Hasard (again to quote the label), “the perspective is reversed: the darkest and most dissonant black metal is the fertile ground on which fascinating orchestral melodies with a dark, melancholic and resigned mood flourish.”

And so it’s tempting to compare these two different aspects of Hazard‘s musical talents to the creations of Robert Louis Stevenson (who frantically wrote his novella in the grip of illness or drugs or both) — to compare them to Dr. Jekyll, the educated and erudite Victorian-era physician who was nevertheless beset with persistent urges he considered depraved, and the outright evil and remorseless monstrosity of his alter ego Edward Hyde, in whom Jekyll fruitlessly sought through potion to confine impulses he wished to suppress, an experiment that ended in despair.

I don’t intend to press the comparison too far, despite the fact that photos of Hazard themselves seem to be set in a much older era than our own, but it serves at least a superficial purpose, because it may help you prepare yourself for the ravages of Hasard‘s new album Abgnose, which I, Voidhanger will release at the end of this week (a Bandcamp Friday). Continue reading »