Comes in a 4 panels Digipack format with an 8 pages booklet and a picture printed CD. 2021 Reedition
From start to finish this is a stunning work of black metal art. I've heard this cd several times now and can find absolutely no fault with it. Main man Nephtys, who plays guitars and keyboards and also sings, proves himself a highly accomplished musician and arranger in the way he combines black metal, dark ambient keyboard-based tones and symphonic / classical music elements such that they complement and flavour one another well, add depth to the album and do not compete for your attention. He's got a wicked sense of humour too in that he introduces the first two tracks "Le Linceul de la Mort" and "Les Abimes du Temps" with very quiet ambient sounds so you have to either turn up the volume on your player or move closer to it and then all of a sudden he wacks you full in the face with furious blasts of shit-hot machine-gun guitar fire and equally rapid-fire percussion courtesy of bandmate Sytris. Just in case you're still standing upright in the middle of "Les Abimes ...", the trio lull you inot a false sense of security with a gorgeous instrumental passage of strummy folksy-styled electric guitar and just when you think "ah, this is just lovely", the Gallic gentlemen aim another radioactive slab of guitar noise and vokill screech right between your eyes, in the process blowing the skin off your face and reducing your skull and its contents to very fine grey powder.
Practically all tracks feature alarming changes of tempo and mood: quivering balalaika-style playing can alternate with blitzkrieg guitar / percussion attacks which merge into phalanxes of battering ram martial rhythms and solid riffing. I am amazed that the musicians keep in time so well, their playing is spot-on and tight enough yet not too tight that the music can't flow and loses its freshness and ferocity. In one song there is bonkers chanting as though a priest has appeared to admonish Nephtys and Friends for their blasphemy but they turn their guitar ray guns on him and annihilate his polluting presence with screams and guitar / drumming thunder. Special mention must be made of "To the Threshold of Nothingness" which features an intro of noisy juddering strings buzz.
The singing is something to behold too: Nephtys not only rants a lot but on tracks like "Souviens-Toi" and "Ultima Venia", he'll hold a roar for what seems an excruciating eternity. "Ultima Venia" also features growling and a keyboard symphonic music passage with chanting. There aren't too many BM vokillists who can do all different kinds of voices on the one album and stay in control throughout while giving the impression that at any moment they're about to fall off the deep end, psychologically speaking.
It's hard to pick out highlights: mysterious and beautiful dark ambient music passages and clear tones, utterly berserk guitars and rhythms, demonic screaming, majestic keyboard-based symphonic and classical music passages, dark Gothic atmospheres, musicianship of a consistently high standard, and everything jelling together so well ... all of this indicates a cool and calculating yet slightly demented intelligence at work ... I never dreamt I'd be like James Montague of the Chronicles of Chaos website and call a BM record "immaculate" but this recording is absolutely IMMACULATE.
"Souviens-toi" represents traditional black metal in all its glory, – so much so that there is no need to talk about, for example, sound or vocals, everything is very typical here – typical in a good way. But it would be a mistake to define "Souviens-toi" as atmospheric black metal. No doubt, Epheles create a grandiose atmosphere in which you can detect the shades of mystical fear, or inhuman greatness, or even despair, and so on. Both riffs and not infrequent ambient pieces work for this. But the point is that the main element of atmospheric black metal – the tremolo picking melody line – doesn't play the decisive role in the aura of songs on "Souviens-toi".
In the most notable cases, atmospheric tremolo lead line acts as a kind of long-awaited dessert, and, again, more often than not, Epheles strictly follow etiquette and offer during a song only one majestic tremolo picking melody, at the very minimum, in the second half of the composition: in "Le linceul de la mort" at 4:48, in "Les abîmes du temps" at 6:48 – tough! the second dessert is served here, from 8:10 to the accompaniment of a finger-picked guitar, – in "Les siècles d'ignorance" at 4:04 (most likely, this is the best lead on the album), and in "Ultima Venia" at 5:58. When vocals come in, as the suspenseful lead melody progresses, the result turns out very powerful and emotional, which is most noticeable in the latter case. But pay attention to the (very) rough rhythm guitar, to the accompaniment of which the indicated lead whirls in each case – well, this trick is not very suitable for atmospheric black metal. Even monotonous atmospheric keyboards (Epheles use them quite often) cannot overcome this rhythmic roughness. Maybe it's really "brutal" to be a genre like atmospheric black metal in its pure form. The "notable cases" term suggests that there are also "non-notable ones" – yes, indeed, tremolo sounds quite often on "Souviens-toi". So, the second song "Les abîmes du temps" begins with a mid-paced tremolo riff – a wonderful example of French black metal, melodic and evil. While the first riff of "Les siècles d'ignorance" is a Norwegian-inspired tremolo riff, it repeats at the end at 6:06, and "Ultima Venia" begins with a blast beat section to the accompaniment of an extremely aggressive tremolo – arguably "Ultima Venia" is the most aggressive song on the album. The point is that these "operative" tremolo riffs almost get lost in the intense riffage and saturated structure: they are like bricks – you cannot build a house without them, but who looks at them later?
The "dessert" majestic tremolo picking lead lines are noticeably different from the "operative" tremolo riffs: they are not built on the endless repetition of the same chord (which is typical, for example, for Forteresse), but submit some melodic progression. The piercing lead melodies develop sedately and confidently like sprouts rising from the ground, they enchant like skillful hypnotist's passes.
A more weighty argument why it's not very good to classify black metal on this album as atmospheric, is the discrete nature of the melody lines: the main melody is constantly interrupted, well, it slows down dramatically and even stops, as if it doesn't dare to continue further. Or, conversely, as if it intrigues, teases, lures. Given that discreteness / discontinuity affects more than just the tremolo lead sections (which is quite impressive in itself), a side effect of this technique is that the structure of the songs, as already noted, becomes sophisticated: everything alternates, jumps back and forth – violent blast beat-laden sections turn into sinister slowness, and vice versa. If not for the capable arrangement, the structure of the songs could be defined as "ragged". Yes, one way or another, the atmosphere reigns here, but this is not atmospheric black metal at all. This discreteness is so deeply rooted in Epheles' music that its absence becomes even something unusual, as, for example, in "To the Threshold of Nothingness". This composition also begins with a classic tremolo melody, one and the same riff is repeated, it seems, countless times – only at 2:51 drums, rhythm and vocals enter. Nevertheless, this uncharacteristic for Epheles passage is somewhat charming, perhaps due to the despair that looms in this riff.
Despite the self-evident dominance of French black metal on "Souviens-toi", the Norwegian school shows through in the riffs sometimes, more specifically it's early Ancient, both in music and sound. As for the rhythm guitar when it jangles nerves in a mid-tempo, we can say that a "southern accent" of a rather wide spectrum dominates here – Mortuary Drape, Varathron an so on. For example, the tragical almost doomy riffage in "Le linceul de la mort", starting from 2:30, and especially the palm muted downstroke riff from 3:03. Or in already mentioned "To the Threshold of Nothingness", when at 2: 51 the slow black metal riff enters after a long tremolo melody, and at 5:06 we again hear the remarkable palm muted downstroke riff.
And the unexpected thrash metal passages, which abound on "Souviens-toi" too, don't at all fit into the aura of atmospheric black metal. Most often they wedge themselves into the body of the song as unbidden guests, however, the "host" doesn't pay attention to them and continues to go about his business as if nothing had happened: in "Les abîmes du temps" there is a short thrash metal bridge at 3:07, while at 5:46 a palm muted riff with the thrash metal attitude, also very short. In "Les siècles d'ignorance" at 3:14, again, the thrash metal bridge interrupts a rather heartfelt black metal riff in order to bursts into a blood-pumping blast beat, so we have some wild thrash metal-ish Mysticum. It is also worth mentioning the mid-tempo thrash metal passage in "Souviens-toi" at 0:39, quite long and intensive, which is also crushed by the blasting rampage.
Summing up, "Souviens-toi" is a very interesting work, in which the laws of the genre are closely intertwined with the ingenious approach. Here you will find exquisite melodies and rather harsh passages. It's neither atmospheric / melodic nor aggressive / rough black metal, maybe the "golden mean" between them.
"Souviens-toi" has an intricate fate. The material for this album was recorded no later than 2003, and originally it was supposed to be released by a certain label, which, however, kicked the bucket. At that time the album was titled completely differently – "Le dernier pardon". According to Discogs, by the way, a few CD-Rs of "Le dernier pardon", burned at the time, are now considered bootlegs by Epheles. This recording was released only three years later in 2006 by an entirely different label – and already under the title "Souviens-toi". Not only the title and cover of the album were changed, all songs have been renamed, except "Ultima Venia". So the content remains the same, but the appearance has changed completely. Well, be that as it may, many years have passed since then, so at the very beginning of 2021 this album will be re-released on vinyl (for the first time ever) by Drakkar Productions. This work really deserves it.
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