France and eccentric Black Metal, I can sum up tens of bands that play unorthodox yet still very orthodox, and mostly unique, refreshing Black Metal, pushing limits and trespassing borders, without forgetting the core of their raison d’être. A young act that follows the very same direction is this one.
The debut album by Situs Magus, Le Grand Oeuvre (‘the great work’) is a concept, divided into four parts, called Noir, Blanc, Jaune and Rouge (‘black’, ‘white’, ‘yellow’ and ‘red’ respectively), with a total running time of forty minutes.
It all starts very promising. Eerie, Black-edged Funeral Doom from the darkest regions of Musical Creativity, drenched in a veil of suicidal emotions and psychotropic revelations. Ambient atmospheres and the core of abyssal old styled Underground Black Metal, Post-Metal structures and a symbiosis of nihilistic / minimal and complex / experimental excipientia, eerie through its repetitively, haunting through a sound so cold, so dry, so suffocative and paranoid…
A sublime mixture of, let’s say, Shining, Blut Aus Nord, So Much For Nothing, Deathspell Omega, Forgotten Tomb, Mortifera, Xasthur and Thrall, injected with a nice dose of Burzum and Thorns - sounds lovely, not?...