Great cover. I’m not normally one to get all frothy over artwork but ‘Resilience’s well-rendered blend of occult imagery and mystical symbolism really caught my eye before I’d even heard a note. Judge a CD by its cover? Hey, why not - it’s worked out quite well here as this album is a bit of a stormer. Practically a one-man band (main protagonist Slo handles everything bar the 4-string), Smohalla name-check some of the highlights of my album collection – Arcturus, Blut Aus Nord and Ulver leaping out most prominently. And blow me down if for once, the label puff is pretty much spot-on – a veritable carnival of swirling synths, industrialized stomping, jagged guitar work and a consistent thread of black cosmic ambience, ‘Resilience’ makes a real mark as a quality work of avant-garde black metal.
There are some awesome moments here – the lurching riff that explodes midway through ‘Oracle Rouge’ for example, puncturing through the sibilant, eerie atmospherics like some sort of horrific Lovecraftian pachyderm trampling across planets. On ‘Au Sol Les Toges Vides’, Slo’s choral clean vocals are a dead-ringer for the strident and sorely-missed tones of late-90s Garm. Meanwhile, the extended instrumental ‘Marche Silencieuse’ builds the tension wonderfully, released in a cavalcade of frenetic, discordant blasting in perhaps the album’s most vicious track ‘L’homme et la Brume’. At six-plus minutes, this song alone packs in more ideas than the vast majority of bands do in an album.
And that is perhaps key to my only real complaint with ‘Resilience’ insomuch as they do occasionally attempt to cram in a little too many ideas. Riffs upon riffs tumble out of the speakers at times in a seemingly haphazard fashion with what feels like little thought given to defining a structure to the song concerned. As impressive as it is to dizzy the listener with a headspinning barrage of ideas, once in a while Smohalla drift into ‘riff pile’ syndrome – passages mounting up one after another without any real sense of definition to the song concept. It’s ambitious of them and certainly reeks of unbridled creativity but needs a touch of refinement.
With that in mind, let us not forget however that this is a debut album and as such must be applauded for its breadth of scope and sheer confidence in both the ideas presented and the undeniable competence of the execution. I for one applaud them for tackling a potentially tricky approach to the avant-garde side of the genre and delivering a by and large excellent record of atmospheric, intriguing black metal. There’s no doubt in my mind that ‘Resilience’ is certain to be received warmly by fans of the aforementioned acts.
http://smohalla.free.fr
Frank Allain
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