Label: Listenable Records
Date: October 25th, 2024
Just like I promised in my last review, now time for reviewing the newest item of the legendary French ensemble has come. This is very fresh stuff – premiere took place last Friday (October 25th). Guys for many years have collaborated with, also legendary, especially in their country, Listenable Records. Anyways, since number of 12” vinyl is limited to not too many copies, I decided to write this review as fast as possible (it took more time than I wished, I wanted to make review ready to publish even before premiere of full-length, but that’s still not too bad) to give you possibility to order “Altering…” in this form, if you wish to do it. But before I’ll start to describe music itself, I’ll give you some basic facts about the band, because I know outside their motherland it’s unfortunately not as well-known as it deserves to be. Well, personally I can’t get why this is like that and have huge feelings for them, because their debut was one of the first albums I bought, of course if we’ll not count the ones of metal Gods such as Slayer, Sepultura, Metallica, King Diamond, Dark Angel… The ensemble was born 1985 in the northern part of France, near the borderline with Belgium, but for the first full-length, “Sensorial Treatment” they waited a whole four years. But it was worth the wait so long time, believe me! That’s one of the best full-lengths I heard and coming back to it very often – this is still fresh as hell! In Loudblast in space of these, with three years break, 2000 they reunited for only one gig, played more than dozen musicians (from the original line-up there’s still only guitarist and vocalist Stephane), but it never disturbed them to be very active in releasing new stuffs, especially in the first period of existence – up to 1999.
Ok, I think it’s enough with biographical facts now. It’s still a review and it means we, even if in a little different way, need to concentrate on what guys created. And they’re serving us a very tasty music dish consisting of ten tracks, and on limited edition digipacks there are three bonuses available. Opening whole album track “From Beyond II (The Return)” strongly refers to the song coming from the debut full-length of our French friends, and this isn’t only about its title as well. Another nine ones (there’re also three bonus tracks, but since I’m not sure if it takes all formats, you should ask about it) aren’t as much influenced by thrash metal as mentioned before. They’re more into death metal tracks, even if also in them you can recognize some touches of the genre from which the just mentioned sub-genre of Metal originates. I mean, you can still hear what guys played in their early years, classic death/thrash, but that’s not as obvious as it was on the first few releases of Loudblast.
At the same time even a not very experienced ear is able to notice this with no huge problems, especially with guitar play. I’m talking even more about melody than characteristics of riffs. They’re still more aggressive than broken. I could of course, and probably should, even do it so that I could be called a professional, write something more about them and so on, but somehow, I don’t feel obligated to do that. Besides, I think it’d be almost mission impossible, from the reason I mentioned in the very first paragraph, for me to do it. I just can’t make it easier for you by comparing this creativity to some other bands. I tell only you’ll listen to both melodic and brutal, as well as aggressive music here. On the other hand, in my opinion, it’ll be much better if you’ll check out, if you still haven’t heard the music of this French legend before, Loudblast music by yourselves and then decide what to do. As for me, the decision can be only one and this is as clear as a day. I’ll do everything to get this released once again by French Listenable Records full-length as soon as possible! I know prices aren’t too low, but (once again) believe me, that’s worth this money! I of course address those words to people who hear this name for the first time. And I’m afraid there’s still quite a lot of such individuals. And the only thing I want to add to this review is I hope we won’t be forced to wait for another album of the ensemble as long as this time – long four years.
