There are a couple of French bands called Myrkvid, but this review deals with a release by the one from the city of Besancon, department of Franche-Comté, close to the Swiss border.
This band was formed in 2007, and in 2010 they released the mini-album Satanic Inquisition. And for your information: current label Asgard Hass Productions did re-release this material last year on vinyl, with inclusion of some live bonus tracks.
After several line-up changes (only guitarist / vocalist Myrk remains as founding member), the band entered the RockBox Studio once again with producer P.E. Fischer at the helm. The result is called Pleasures Of Hell, which comes in an edition of 666 copies.
After the short yet really scarifying intro The Way Of Madness, Myrkvid sort of explode, erupt, with Four Spikes… And Die !. And with all other tracks to come. What this combo brings is a nasty, fierce and blaspheme form of Satanic Black Metal with, well, I can’t ignore it, melodic song structures, but for sure with an attitude that puts its middle-finger deep in the arse of ***. Sorry, I lost my self-control. Anyway, Pleasures Of Hell is what confuses me. Not that I cannot enjoy hellish pleasures, aha!... No, once again we’re dealing with a band that brings the kind of material we’ve been pleased with a thousand times before. It might be sublime, but so are hundreds of releases lately as well. You can’t speak about a revival of the Nineties, because this era has never disappeared at all. As a matter of fact, the Nineties were never so profoundly present as they are now. And there are so much combos that perform, without reinventing, that glorious era of Aural Art. But each time when the result is at least acceptable, I have to, being a honest reviewer, describe the result as acceptable - or better. I can’t do otherwise right now either. Pleasures Of Hell has nothing original to add; it does not bring renewed power to the overcrowded scene either; but since the final result is, once again, of a superior quality, I need to express my appreciation. And that’s what I will do for the thousandth time since the beginning of this decade. Despite a huge amount of exceptional albums inspired and / or influenced by the Second Wave, I cannot ignore this album, and I will not either. Pleasures Of Hell is, once again, the sonic expression of majestically sounding anger and disgust, the most misanthropic way, with a huge list of compliments: grandiose riffs, a mammoth rhythm section, lots of variation in speed and structure, and such a dirty sound quality… The quality of the individual songs is grandiose, whether they are fast or even faster (with a couple of slower passages, of course), and once again this album brings a fine equilibrium in between melody and aggression. Once again lots of once agains, I know… But it is not because this album gets released months after another great one, that I do need to say that this one does not fulfil my expectations. I do listen to hundreds of new (and older) recordings each day (slightly exaggerated, but seen the number of reviews I do, you can’t say I don’t have the pleasure to enjoy and bla, bla, and even more bla… Skip the crap, and forget about other releases. This review deals with Myrkvid, and they did, or better: they do a splendid job with Pleasures Of Hell! Though I am not in Hell right now (too hot; I’m searching for refreshment after travelling for a couple of weeks within a quasi-desert-alike Mediterranean area), it is my pleasure…