4-panel Digipak with 8-page booklet. Produced by Obscure Abhorrence Productions
Tracks 1 to 4: Recorded at Studio Hell, Quebec City, January 2016
Track 7 is a Bathory cover.
Les puits des morts brings together long running Québecois black metal band Sorciers des Glaces and French upstarts Ende. Released in September 2016 through Obscure Abhorrence Productions, the album flows nicely between the two projects, offering four songs from each. Despite how the bands bring similar sounds, the resulting hour of music plays through more like two separate EP's rather than a cohesive split. Both sides are pretty damn good in their own right, but Ende had their work cut out for them trying to match up with the incredible high quality that Soricers des Glaces has been known for.
Sorcier des Glaces has seemingly been at the forefront of the Québecois black metal movement since forming in 1997. The band features Sébastien Robitaille on bass, guitar and vocals and Luc Gaulin on drums. The band's sound usually summons images of cold wintry nights and snow-laden forests, utilizing layers of sweeping, mesmerizing trem passages alongside bleak, screamed vocals and unrelenting, blasting percussion. The tracks here sound like a continuation of the style the band approached on their last full length, North. Much like that album, their tracks on Les puits des morts sound almost symphonic, despite the absence of keyboards anywhere on their side of the split. It's a testament to the frenzied, multi-layered trem riffing of Robitaille. There are some exceptionally strong movements throughout, like where the first wave inspired, stomping riff during “Dans l'immensité blanche de la plaine” breaks way for an avalanche of sweeping trems. The songs are all fairly lengthy, yet the songwriting flows quite nicely, easily transitioning between patterns with no wasted seconds. Honestly, the tracks here are among the best of the band's already impressive catalog. France's Ende, notable for featuring multi-instrumentalist I. Lucifera, one half of Reverence (better known as that band that did two splits with Blut Aus Nord), has released two full lengths and a demo since forming in 2010. Their four tracks are decent, but seem to suffer from a massive case of schizophrenia. That being said, their opener, “Notre falaise” offers a moody, mid-paced track with rampant keyboards and pulsing, wraith-like guitar passages. The vocals sound quite tortured and dissonant, yet the keys clamor in the background, often colliding with the guitar riffs. Despite the cacophonous approach, it's a pretty cool track that shows a band with promise. “Sacrifice” follows suit, although it approaches the blackened dissonance with blasting on the front end, before morphing into some off-kilter, strangely tuned guitar patterns with bellowing keys in the background that border on droning. Again, there are some strange elements, but it sounds quite promising despite the jarring approach. The last two tracks include a cover of Bathory's “Call from the Grave”, which doesn't stray all too far from the original, though the vocals are buried in the mix, and a flighty, ambient outro, which is decent but there isn't a lot to dig into. The first two tracks from Ende are kind of cool, but the cover seemed lacking, as they really could have added their own dissonant flair to a Bathory classic.
While both bands are rooted in black metal, Sorcier des Glaces and Ende bring drastically different approaches to the genre. Ende is rooted in dissonant, tortured soundscapes while Sorcier des Glaces offers intricate and sweeping, second wave inspired movements. Ende offers some decent, yet schizophrenic material, and has really caught my attention, but they are simply outclassed by Sorcier des Glaces. Overall, there are fine performances on both ends and this split should be well worth your time.
Sample: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
