Look, I'm a vampire!
Kids are into vampires nowadays aren't they? Aren't they?
Wait, what?...sparkling? Really? No. Just no.
Okay, in all honesty I look way more queasy, washed-up rock star than vampire in that picture anyway.
Besides, everyone knows that the mainstream love of vampires is most often demonstrated in a context of financial and social excess - with the carnally-fixated bloodsuckers becoming more popular during times of prosperity, decadence and liberalism. Odd considering the origin of the vampire myth stems from fears about the transmission of disease and ignorance of the biological changes that occur in a human body post-mortem.
So...in a shattered, post-Global Financial Crisis world people feel helpless; manipulated by the government that they elected; powerless in the face of forces greater than themselves. They fear being dehumanized, stripped of the attributes that make them something more than a shuffling, unthinking automaton acting mindlessly on primal impulses.
...so, zombies. We're talking about zombies.
Makes sense; after all zombies are just people robbed of all the things that made them people in the first place - they're reduced to a level less than animal. Zombies are chiefly frightening because of their emptiness; their lack of any form of intelligence and thought. Also, there's always masses of them. Who hasn't looked at a great heaving crowd of people pushing together (at a concert, in a crowded bar, in a mosh-pit, whatever) and seen not individuals but some huge, faceless, unthinking mass. Loads of people crowded too close together are scary, man. You could get crushed in those kind of situations. Folks have been killed.
Oh, and the biting; no one likes the biting.
Okay. I can do zombies.
Look, I'm a zombie!
Oh, screw it. I'm just going to blog about music.
And here we go, Ladies and Gentlemen; now for something truly, properly Gothic...
(...)
I'm not sure what it is about the French. The artistic output of that country seems to be a series of opposites - light and dark, bright and bleak - with very few intermediate stages. There is the matter of their Operas. French Baroque is gilded, perfumed, opulent and decadent; dripping vibrancy and flamboyance - it conjures images of powdered wigs and rosebud lips, flittering eyelashes and fragranced, voluminous cleavage. But other French composers put forth pieces that storm and rage - rife with thunderous orchestral surges - the kind of music that people topple off cliffs to in silent movies. I'm mostly thinking of Massenet here, Gounod has his moments too. Hell, these pieces rival the Germans for sheer focused intensity.
And on the subject of movies. If you want a frivolous farce or a frothy sex romp - the French are your best bet. If you want something dense and artistic, stylish and cynical - you'll find French flicks that scratch that itch. And if you want a churning, relentless horror film; smeared with blood and steeped in a bleak, voyeuristic atmosphere - yup, The French deliver it.
So there is that odd juxtaposition, almost an oxymoron; effervescent or ominous. Glittering or grinding. Giddy with perfume or smothered in ash.
I have always been drawn to dark ideas. This is why I exposed myself to 'Martyrs'; a French horror film that explored the transcendent nature of suffering. It was a savage experience and revealed Eli Roth and the rest of the Gore-nography crowd for the shallow adolescents they are. It was not an enjoyable film - I witnessed it rather than watched it - and I doubt I will ever repeat the viewing.
Anyway, it was dark, man, is what I'm saying.
And so to this French dark-wave/neo-Classical band:
Elend 'Lecons de Tenebres' (Holy Records, 1994)
This was their debut album - at the time they were a trio; with all three contributing vocals. I came in much later, checking out the Orphika re-issue (2008) of their darkest and most intimidating album: 'The Umbersun' (originally released in 1998 by Music for Nations). That latter disc was a black-souled maelstrom, an abyss of an album - it was the closest I've come to witnessing pure darkness in a musical medium. The only reference point I can figure for it is if one were to take Dead Can Dance at their absolute darkest, combine that with the score from 'The Omen' ('Ave Satani' in particular, obviously) and then blend that with the music that plays every time the obelisk manifests in '2001: A Space Odyssey', you would still only have a vague idea of what 'The Umbersun' sounds like.
That disc used choirs extensively but deliberately had the different vocal parts combine in a jarring, dis-harmonic way (and often lapsing into outright screams, albeit note-perfect ones), this coupled with the swirling and surging orchestral arrangements (which would often fall back to a delicate whisper only to suddenly stab forwards in a rushing knife-blade of sound) created a profoundly unsettling and immersive atmosphere. And then there were the extreme vocals... This wasn't the more common grunting or shrieking of death- or black metal bands, this was something else entirely. These vocals were soul-ravaging howls - full of anguish and intensity, startlingly unhinged. I'd never heard that replicated in any metal band until I stumbled upon 'A Forest of Stars' - their vocalist, Mr Curse, employs a very similar technique; presumably the result of listening to Elend.
'The Umbersun' was the final part of a trilogy depicting Lucifer's rebellion and fall. In 'The Umbersun' the Light-Bringer takes his throne in Hell. 'Lecons de Tenebres' is the first installment.
It cannot match 'The Umbersun' for sheer intensity and its presumably small recording budget is somewhat evident. It is, nonetheless, a challenging and fascinating release.
There is a single soprano on this album; Eve-Gabrielle Siskind - one of the trio. Her voice is a fleeting and fragile thing; youthful to the point of sounding childlike, naïve. She is Julee Cruise bathed in blue light, standing before wine-red curtains. Her voice is used to gild the music rather than carry it and she dances upon the seething electronic orchestrations. The bulk of the vocal duties goes to the two male vocalists; Alexandre Iskander Hasnaoui and Renaud Tschirner. One favours dark, ominous mumbling and a thick, bone-numbing baritone that recalls DCD's Brendan Perry. The other howls and shrieks, gibbers and roars. The music is almost entirely synthesized - lush, deep piano chords marking a path through a swirling fog of synths. Here and there the scraping and keening of an electric violin is utilized. Most of the songs begin quietly, hushed, before the shadows swarm in once again. Many tracks veer from delicate, melancholy melody to writhing atonal dissonance.
This is orchestral Black Metal (sans guitars, sans bass, mostly sans drums - there are some timpani-style patches employed late in the album). It is music made to communicate fear. And grandeur.
Unfortunately, the synth-pads date the album slightly - the production mix is somewhat unforgiving and those electronics sometimes sound a little cheap. On later releases - specifically the 'Winds' trilogy ('Winds Devouring Men', 'Sunwar the Dead' and 'a World in Their Screams') - Elend were able to utilize a full orchestra and choir; though the budget demands of this vision proved crippling and Elend ended their sonic experiment altogether after 'A World...' (said trilogy was originally intended to be a five-album series).
'Lecons de Tenebres' is a stunning release - ambitious beyond what any other artists were doing at the time. It is singularly, utterly Gothic - and not in the PVC-pouting-and-eyeliner kind of way either. It is gorgeous, haunting and bleakly beautiful (and, if you can get past the shrieking, markedly more accessible than some of their other releases). There is a shortage of other bands to whom comparisons can be made; Daargard and Die Verbannten Kinder Evas spring to mind but I find Elend somewhat more successful in their ambitions than those other bands (well, 'duos' actually). Though they too, are well worth checking out, if that's your bag.
If you always thought Cradle of Filth's atmospheric, orchestral interludes were among their finest moments (yup, I did), or if you loved My Dying Bride for their mellower, more lavish numbers like 'Black God' or 'For My Fallen Angel'; Elend will definitely hold a great deal of appeal. As an aside, what Elend succeed at so stunningly is clearly what MDB were aiming for with their special release 'Evinta' (an album I am extremely fond of but which suffers from too much negative space in each track).
I would definitely recommend anyone interested in grand, orchestral darkness to check out Elend; though be aware, their albums utilize dissonance as much as melody - in truth, probably a little more. This isn't the music of the spheres - this is the music of the void.
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