Some musicians just need a simple but intriguing refrain for instantly capturing your mind and dragging you into something awkward and obscure, such as a story about a blasphemous ritual run by four eerie ministers of suspicious sainthood; populated by evil beasts, odd malevolent entities, freaks and culminating with a mass celebrated for a dog …I’m not into some badly cut drug, it’s all fault of the brand new, visionary and overwhelming album by the French doom congregation in Barabbas. Barabbas are an unsigned quartet from Northern France (Combs-la-Ville, Île-de-France) that prepontently entered the international doom scene back in 2011 with a stunning debut EP called Liberéz Barabbas! (
here; two cool interviews
here and
here.)
The choice of an ambiguous historical/religious reference like Barabbas goes side by side with the adoption of peculiar nicknames for the band members. They are all saints: Saint Rodolphe on vocals, Saint Stephan on guitars, Saint Jérôme on bass and Saint Jean-Christophe on drums. There are other interesting features in Barabbas, like, for example, the lyrics in French and the original, if not unique, contaminated music style. Barabbas’ style had been described as inspired by Black Sabbath, Saint-Vitus/The Obsessed and Cathedral as well as injected by explosive hardcore energy, in spite of Barabbas’ doom being markedly melodic. But this definition is far from being exhausting for tagging the new load of tunes making up the new full-length album, Messe Pour Un Chien, that is the above-mentioned mass for a dog.
The new album was self-released on November 5th 2014 and is available as digital download and as cool digipack version via the Bandcamp page of Barabbas. Messe pour un Chien can be considered a concept album encompassing 8 tracks for over 56 minutes, i.e. almost double length of the 2011 debut. The trait-d’union seems to be the intriguing, sinister refrain starting and leading the first, short track, “La malédiction de Sainte Sélène”, a sort of secret door which will open over a moon-lit gloomy tale and eventually close. The refrain will stick to your mind immediately with its simple dynamics and soon it will become the backbone of something monumental, supernatural and, well, quite menacing via the burst of Barabbas’ rough, noisy riffs, thundering drums and the prominent, thick bassline, another highly appreciated trademark of the band. Saint Rodolphe won’t wait too much in adding his own specialty, his vocals. Whispers will give way to half-chanted declamation of Isaiah’s verses about Lucifer’s fall, and eventually to blood-chilling screams seeping through the electric noise. Soon everything will be swallowed by a grim sonic fog where only some slow bell tolls are calling the sinners to the mass …
The following tracks (in sequence, Le couteau ou l'Abîme, Moi, le Mâle Omega, Judas est une Femme, La Beauté du Diable, Priez!, Le Sabbath dans la Cathédrale and the title track, Messe pour un Chien) will be just action, pathos and suspense like in a vintage cinemascope horror movie where intricated textures coupled with freshness and infectiousness of sounds and melodies stand for the typical hypersaturated colours. Long ballads (over 7 minutes long) alternate with few shorter tracks, although the difference in length is not instrumental for variation. Each track in this album is kaleidoscopic and surprising. Barabbas’ songwriting is impressive. The leading melodies are never straightforward but incredibly catchy and addictive. To this you have to add the breathtaking performance of Saint Rodolphe. The vocalist is endowed of an amazing tonal range and employing the richness and the intensity of the French language also for crosscutting the boundaries between metal and the “Chanson”, like a raucous Jacques Brel, in the most heartfully intense, epic passages.
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Total classic doom may be the blackboard where Barabbas depict their ballads, and it is the actual leading feature in Le couteau ou l'Abîme, where the slow, plodding pace is set by the bell toll. However in this album Barabbas’ doom is more contaminated than ever. For example, in this and other tracks on the new album (like, for example, Priez!) several features remind me of the gothic-tinged metallic deathrock by Babylon Whores. Such impression stems particularly from style, intensity and dynamics of the melodies and probably also from some features in Saint Rodolphe’s singing style, especially when he goes for the clean or slightly raucous singing. Barabbas’ gothic aura coupled with strong melodic approach and fresh dynamics are also somehow reminding me of another cool French band that I admire a lot, Modern Funerary Art. Not for the vocals, of course, but for some features in the music. In album Messe pour un Chien I think I also caught some proggy echoes à-la-Opeth, and maybe some minimal but charming exotic contamination, be it oriental like in Priez! or else tribal-like in Le Sabbath dans la Cathédrale. These different elements in Barabbas’ music go side by side with the onmipresent massive load of raw, beefy groove, for me hands and feet deeply into the best moments in Down. So maybe it would be the case of writing about Barabbas’ own “doom-influenced metal style”.
But Barabbas are masters also when it comes to speeding up by blending the “immiscible” plodding, sabbathian doom and wild metallic punk, like in the stunning Moi, le Mâle Omega, or in La Beauté du Diable. There you get possessed straight away, no resistance at all, and just feel like joining the dance. La Beauté du Diable is a stream of frenetic energy almost evoking the flickering movement of the devouring hellish fire. It is a concentrate of infectious, super-groovy riffs for wild dance and almost joyous headbanging and totally, insanely decoupled from its gruesome lyrics based on the fairy tale of Red Riding Hood. This decoupling too is part of the black magic operated by these four French saints! In La Beauté du Diable Saint Rodolphe’s voice is probably performing on the widest range, even producing a peculiar, dark growl, the growl of the wolf hungry for blood … Here like elsewhere of Barabbas’ music, the bassline is the solid, pulsating backbone, those thick vibrating chords!
Priez! is one of the short (less than 6 minutes) tracks on the album and is a gem of catchy, gothic doom rock where the band shows a magistral way of transforming the leading melody according to original and enthralling patterns. The piece Le Sabbath dans la Cathédrale is an imposing, heavy and strongly melodic ballad oozing energy as well as sinister atmosphere. The latter owes some contribution also from the adoption of keyboards (not a novelty for the band, though). The organ sound fights for emerging from the rumble of the guitars but it doesn’t fail in imparting the due horror gothic brushstroke required for chanting the sabbath. The “exotic” element here comes towards the end of the track in form of a tribal rhythm coupled with the choir of the sabbath acolytes. It’s just a brief flash of macumba quickly turned into gothic atmosphere by means of the organ-driven refrains. In the new album there is also space for more sombreand even intimate songs, like Judas est une Femme and the title track, Messe pour un Chien.
“Judas est une Femme” is a moving, anguishing ballad. It starts via a pure Electric Wizard-esque riff. Barabbas have however no need of indulging too much into over-exploited riffs, as the Saints rework the wizardesque input into their personal style: high tension in the leading riffage, wide open, almost epic melodic charge and proggy textures in contrast with the roughness of Saint Rodolphe’s singing. In Messe pour un Chien, the longest track (over 10 minutes), the band couple a typical feature heard in many doom albums, the falling rain, with blues and proggy elements. This is the most melancholic song of the album and alternates semi-acoustic parts with “slow” bursts of solemn, “oceanic” riffs. It’s the end, the dreary end of everything narrated in the album. There is no organ here but in the second part of the piece some flutters from the synth give a slight vintage, Goblin-like touch, not long before the initial, sinister refrain will come back and definitely drag you out of the story and close the door …
The addictive music and the highly involving performance of the singer were among the features that made me particularly curious about the impressive lyrics in album Messe pour un Chien. As in many cases in extreme metal albums, the “satanic”, orgiastic ritual of the black mass is just the excuse for writing, in an often extremely bitter way, about the supreme evil naturally residing in humans. Barabbas’ lyrics involve concepts and images belonging to both typical religious/ritual features and contemporary critical social issues. When not declaming about the liberatory sabbath bacchanals, verses may often be very sharp and hard, sometimes provocative (like Judas est une Femme) and sometimes broadly inspired by classic child tales (like in La beauté du diable) where innocence and bestial cruelty often tragically meet. Cruelty … All in all, the impression I got from the dark poems interpreted by amazing Saint Rodolphe is what follows. There is no need of resuscitating or dragging any black-winged alien monster from Hell. Human innate perversion and rational/irrational cruelty against its own species and any other living beings, when not against nature as well, over the centuries are the best personification for the so-called Horned Almighty, so powerful that sometime a scary doubt may arise that God, the good one, either never existed or else was defeated by ruling Evil. How to survive”dans cette vallée de l’ombre”? But when Death comes we are all the same, the nasty human beast is as impotent as his victims, and the blood-thirsty wolf is reduced to an exhausted dog.
In case you don’t feel like dedicating much time to exploring lyrics, well, Barabbas’ music is so crushingly involving that satisfaction is guaranteed all the same and you’ll find yourself craving for more. Barabbas’ first EP, Liberez Barabbas!, had a pitfall, it was too short. The new full-length album has a pitfall too, it is too short. The world needs more killer French metal like this.
Words:
Marilena MoroniBarabbas @ BandcampBarabbas @ Facebook
Tracklist :
1. La malédiction de Sainte Sélène (03:45)
2. Le couteau ou l'abîme (07:28)
3. Moi, le Mâle Omega (04:14)
4. Judas est une femme (08:23)
5. La beauté du diable (07:56)
6. Priez! (05:42)
7. Le sabbath dans la cathédrale (08:14)
8. Messe pour un chien (10:32)
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