Album Review: Véhémence – Assiégé pour l’Eternité

Album Review: Véhémence – Assiégé pour l’Eternité

Reviewed by Sam Jones

Now and again I go out on a limb to look at releases that fascinate me: today’s band is France’s Véhémence, a curious blend of epic and melodic black metal who I’m vaguely familiar with yet had never checked out. Formed in 2014 in Paris the band dove straight into a self-titled album at once from the word go though it would be five years until their second record, Par Le Sang Versé, would come forth. Album three, 2022’s Ordalies, continued the strong reception fans have ascribed to Véhémence throughout the years and four years later, the band return with Assiégé Pour L’ éternité, primed for a June 10th release date with Antiq Records. After hearing snippets of the record I was intrigued and thus I set out to capture just what newcomers, like myself, can expect from these guys.

It’s must be said the band know how to create an inviting soundscape that manages to excite you without their songwriting overwhelming you. As one starts this record you’ll find their sound is no way looking to bludgeon or rearrange your face, instead their sound is incredibly contained, nearly boxed together. Typically this would be detrimental to a band like Véhémence yet herein conveys their sound across like a gift, a present, something neatly arranged with a bow on top and then handed over to us. It crafts this comforting, smartly attired work as one ready for battle though absent for any want for chaos. The listening experience is therefore tightly controlled; this isn’t the kind of album you lose all manner of composure and decorum too but one infused with the splendour of storytelling.

Though the band are adept playing with speed I appreciate how grounded their sound still comes across as, giving us every opportunity to delve deeply into their performance. This is tied into their epic and melodic stance of black metal; you may not understand a word spoken but you’ll be pulled into their music as easy as breathing. Even as they bring out the longer tracks you won’t feel the pull to wonder how long remains because there’s plenty of variety in their songwriting. There will be blast beats accompanying slower riff pieces, the vocals will exhibit cleaner cries whilst the tempo climbs, a track’s intensity may reach the apex but the guitar work is much more intricate than one expects. Just because the band play fast doesn’t mean the intensity will reach its zenith, and vice versa.

I think the production applied to this record is absolutely perfect. Given the band seek to conjure tales of French medievalism you don’t want a tone that’ll crush audiences into the dirt, rather they’ve placed you squarely amidst the hay and trample of horses. It manages to feel entertaining and a solid investiture of your time without pressing down on the senses; in this regard the record is a blessedly light affair with little effort involved reaping the most out of its six tracks. The drums are pounding and never far from your sight yet blast beats are wondrously mixed in to raise the tempo without having to debilitate the senses. The guitar work feels perfectly positioned to provide sweeping riffs as the harsher vocals come into play, but they also exude valour and bygone honour as these sequences stretch and work into a track’s backbone. Véhémence have effectively zoomed us out, giving us a vantage point ideal for beholding the record in its entirety.

Black metal can be many things; suffocating, rapturous, demonic. Véhémence’s brand can only be labelled as triumphant for whilst their sound is founded in epic black metal, it isn’t conveyed with murderous glee over fallen foes nor ravenous fervour, instead it’s employed in retelling this centuries-old era as a new myth. Listening to the band perform feels like the telling of a new fable or legend; have such events been dramatised for storytelling’s sake? It’s impossible to say for like any myth there’s a hint of truth to them; this record is merely an audible variation of what mythtelling can be. The result of this approach to songwriting, to tone, to black metal, is a record effortlessly rewarding and entertainment renewable.

In conclusion, Véhémence demonstrate themselves to be an upstanding act of black metal, bringing a mythic and celebratory stance of songwriting that’s sorely desired. With six tracks the band bring their fourth album to a close but I know I’ll be there front and centre come their next release; they manage to balance that fine line between ferocity and beauty, roping in the flute periodically when the need demands it, offsetting their blackened vitriol for something more homely and representative of a people’s trials. Véhémence’s sound could easily pass as something out of a fantasy yet there’s always this reminder it’s borne out of the far past, not out of some romanticism but a legitimate allure of bygone times. A quality time to be sure.

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