Qubec, Canada is not a place I have ever visited, nor – if truth be told, the kind of place I am ever likely to go to. I can’t speak any French other than to confirm my name, ask where the train station is or to say that the cat went out the window. Those three phrases are not likely to be of any great help to me in the Francophile district.
However, thanks to doom band Horizon Obscur, I can recreate the emotion of being from that great area in audio metal form – though that might only work if Quebec is a fucking depressing place that makes me want to shriek my lungs out in French. Horizon Obscur have produced the “Damnes” demo with four French language tracks of fucking rampant miserabilism that I salute entirely. Compositionally, this is bloody impressive stuff – leaning heavily on a legacy of very old Anathema for the bellowed, venomous vocals that occasionally take a taxi into scream territory, but having a very original semi-classical twist with the sophisticated guitar lines, best demonstrated on “Le Pays Son Vie”. Slow, miserable and a little bit bonkers, this is like the doom equivalent of Susan Boyle – only of course about a trillion times more listenable. There are some great ideas here – not to mention some impressive songwriting, though the production isn’t up to the task, with a scratchy, insubstantial guitar tone and a drum sound seemingly constructed as “une homage” (that’s French for a homage) to Lars Ulrich on the ungodly mess that is Saint Anger.
What Horizon Obscur need is either a record deal or someone with access to an actual production suite – as it is, this demo (limited to 50 tapes – old school to the max) is a repository of great ideas waiting for the technology to realise them.
http://www.myspace.com/horizonobscur
