Labels: Nuclear War Now! Productions
Review by: Alex Deller
I’ve pecked at the edges of previous Cauchemar releases like a picky kid pushing food around his plate, but with their second album they’ve become something far, far tastier. On the face of it, nothing has changed too much with ‘Chapelle Ardente’, the band playing a brand of doom metal that’s steeped in a cavernous genre traditionalism redolent of Candlemass, Pagan Altar and Cirith Ungol. What has changed, however, is the calibre of the songwriting: the pushy, driving riffing latches on and refuses to let go while Annick Giroux’s low, husky vocals lend not only additional hooks but a mantric, chanting quality that borders on the hypnotic. Adding to the fray are elegant basslines and washes of dour, funerary sound supplied by an elderly church organ, both of which are used to sterling effect whether the band are traipsing slowly at a pallbearer’s pace or charging towards the crematory flames with defiant heavy metal gusto.