Profundae Libidines: Procès de Sorcellerie (2019)

One day, back in either high school or college, my friend and I had just left Valentino's (a local pizza place) after picking up a carry out order that my parents had placed.  My friend was carrying one of the bags as we were about to get into my car and one of the containers of  French dressing fell out and splattered all over the ground.  Upon seeing this, my friend remarked that it was doomed to fail, because it was French.

Now, why the hell did I tell that story?  Well, mostly because this is my blog and I can do whatever the fuck I like with it.  The other reason is to illustrate that despite being the butt of jokes in the past, I fucking love French metal, particularly black metal.  A number of terrific black metal bands have come from France, including Vlad Tepes, Belkètre,  and Mütiilation, all of whom were part of Les Lègiones.  And then there is the avant-garde Deathspell Omega.  So, I am always on the lookout for some good French black metal.  I was not actively seeking out Profundae Libidines however, this particular album was a freebie in the order that I placed to get yesterday's subject Question and the band that will be covered tomorrow.  But I am happy to get this as a throw-in.

Profundae Libidines is the brainchild of Philoxera, who has done work with a number of other extreme metal bands.  This is primarily his project, although he does enlist help with violins.  Hey, he can't do everything can he?  The sound of Profundae Libidines seems to be rooted in the more melodic and atmospheric tracks of groups from the LLN, and in particular the later material by Mütiilation, with a little DsO thrown in.  It is melodic, for the most part, with repeating tremolo riffs and mostly slower pace.  The songs often feature clean vocals delivered in a sort of chanting tone which work well with the more common raspy vocals typical of black metal.  The whole thing has kind of an odd, off-kilter feel to it that keeps things interesting and fresh, which is necessary when the album is almost an hour long.  There are some sections that are just plain bizarre, such as the bouncy intro to "Les enfants de Veith-Pratzer".  But these sections add a lot of character to something that could just as easily descend into typical black metal tropes.

I have had kind of mixed luck with albums that were thrown into other orders.  There have been some less than impressive ones and others that just do not do much for me personally.  (Goatkraft, Venomous Concept).  This is undoubtedly one of the better ones.  I quite like it.  It fits in well with other French black metal bands.