***In a remarkably short period of time, France’s Cénotaphe have risen from obscurity to become one of the most distinctive voices in black metal. Traced from the band’s auspicious inception, the grand arc of Cénotaphe’s ascent is mapped out in the constellation of releases in its catalog—from the promising spark of 2016’s La larve exulte demo through the explosive burst of last year’s Empyrée MLP, to this, the band’s debut full-length, Monte Verità, a brilliant supernova of melodic entanglements, erudite lyrics, and transcendent composition. Though loosely inspired by a specific mountain in Ascona, Switzerland that, beginning in the early 19th century, attracted a stream of outcasts, artists, and intellectuals in search of solitude and respite from the chaotic world below, the concept behind this album is more allegorical and metaphysical. The lyrics, written in French and delivered in anguished bellows by vocalist Khaosgott, are contemplative and poetic, rich in imagery and allusion. Progressing in stages, each track on the album recounts an individual’s journey, spurred by necessity and guided by instinct, toward detached seclusion from the world of men—observing from a vantage point high above, where the lives of others condense into an indistinct hum vibrating in the valley below. The epiphany may be short-lived, for even after reaching the summit, the lure of society—its traps and its vices, the vulgar pursuits and banal routines of existence—are a constant source of temptation, drawing the individual away from that elusive, enlightened truth. In the title track, Khaosgott depicts the culmination of...
LP $23.50
06/19/2020
***This is where it all began for the French duo CÉNOTAPHE. La Larve Exulte, their first demo, originally released on tape by now-defunct label Kuunpalvelus, consists of four tracks (approx. 24 minutes), recorded between 2015 and 2016. The fundamental elements of Cenotaphe's music are already in place on this demo, in its more primitive, less sophisticated larval stage: wide and epic riffs, harrowing vocals, cryptic keyboard layers, pounding drums, abstract lyrics giving free rein to interpretation… Black metal in all its splendor and misery. La Larve Exulte marks the beginning of the band's onward journey through cosmogony, from the deepest abyss to the empyrean heights.
LP $19.25
09/13/2019
***Over the last several years, France’s CENOTAPHE have unassumingly become one of the most promising new voices in black metal. Operating as a duo—each member with a long and distinguished résumé trailing behind him—multi-instrumentalist FOG performs all of the music, while KHAOSGOTT handles the vocals. The band’s auspicious prior releases (a demo from 2015 and the 2018 Horizons MLP, both on the Finnish label Kuunpalvelus) established a foundation for the band to build upon, and the result is the magnificent Empyrée MLP. In both content and spirit, Cénotaphe draws inspiration from a constellation of 19th century French literary and artistic figures, such as Aloysius Bertrand, Théophile Gautier, Charles Beaudelaire, and the painter, Odilon Redon. It is, however, the poet, Stéphane Mallarmé, who casts the longest shadow over the band. Mallarmé’s work is dense with inscrutable and tangled syntax, every poem an arcane cipher; however, despite his modern and unconventional style, Mallarmé tended to rely on stalwart and traditional poetic forms, like the sonnet. Within the framework of these rigid poetic structures, Mallarmé’s language was itself unconstrained, abstract, exquisitely lawless, but also excruciatingly methodical and intentional.
LP $17.75
05/03/2019