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Trepalium: XIII

03/01/11 || InquisitorGeneralis

A few months back, I reviewed an awful French black metal band named Annthennath and caught some shit for beating the old, dead horse of Franco surrender jokes. I promise to abstain from that type of senseless humor during this review. However, I will not apologize for my irrational and uncompromising hatred of black metal. I realize hatred that powerful is itself very blvck metal and kvlt.

I don’t care. That’s very black metal too…not caring. Damn, soon I’ll be wearing corpsepaint and beating off to videos of Lady Ghaal Ghaal drinking Merlot.

However, since Trepalium focus more on death, heavy, and technical metal and are not not blvck in the least, this is not an issue. I know it is an obvious connection to make, but Trepalium definitely sound similar to their countrymen in Gojira. Just take away some of the progressive elements of Gojira and toss in some more death metal influences. I don’t know what is going there, but when the Frenchies decides to get heavy and groovy they do it as good as anyone else. Gojira and Yyrkoon have been two of my absolute favorite bands for years now. I don’t see Trepalium overtaking those two champs anytime soon, but they definitely are moving up into the heavyweight class. Trepenisium mix groove, death, and a few hints of brutal/grind into something should garner more attention but sadly, it seems Trepalium has been over-looked in recent years.

Parts of this sound like Type O Negative mixed with Gorefest. I would not say this is techdeath in the style of Soreption and Necrophagist but it is certainly a step up from bands like Grave, Obituary, and Facebreaker in terms of song structure and variation. The production on here is top notch also. The guitars have a grinding, vicious tone that is fucking ace. Listen to the opener “Daddy’s happy” for an example of this wonderful, evil guitar sound. Trepalium throw in plenty of fast, blasty, grindy sections to keep you on your toes but there are no five-minute long blast fests to be found on “XIII” which is a good fucken thing. Other stand-out tracks include the straight-up weird, but still extreme, “Usual crap” and “World plague”. Keke’s vocals are solid, low growls for the most part but he throws in some shrieks and screams every now and then to mix things up. No issues in the vox department at all.

The main drawback to “XIII” is that things start to sound the same after a while. I blame that on style and genre. No song on here straight up sucks, but there is a little bit of filler. However, this is definitely off-beat and weird which scores a lot of points with me. There are no major flaws or problems with “XIII” but nothing that pushes it up into the upper stratosphere of awesomeness either. Trepalium can get there though; they just need to find that breakout song that is just accessible enough for the masses but still metal enough for the kvltists.

An example you say? Trepalium need to find their “Ocean planet”. That is song that brought Gojira’s whacky sound to the mainstream but still was true to the band’s roots and style. Trepalium is getting there. Still, this a highly enjoyable, distinct sounding piece of genre-morphing death metal that I am happy to have picked up. What more do you need to hear?

7,5

Information
Released: 2009
Label: Season of Mist
Website: Trepalium MySpace
Band
Kéké (Cédric Punda): vocals
Nicolas Amossé: guitar
Harun Demiraslan: guitar, keyboards
Ludovic Chauveau: bass
Sylvain Bouvier: drums

Tracklist
01. Daddy’s Happy
02. Glowing Cloud
03. Blink of Time
04. Addicted to Oblivion
05. Inner Hell
06. Unexpectable Lies
07. And Now…
08. Usual Crap
09. Become
10. World Plague
11. Sadistik Peace
12. Fant-Easy Reality

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