Unless you keep a close eye on the French death metal underground, chances are you haven’t heard of Whisper Of Death. This French five piece was formed in 2002 in a small village called Ablis, near Paris. This is their debut album after two well received demos – The charmingly titled ‘Boning’ (which I doubt is about what I want it to be about) in 2008 and 2012’s ‘Epilepsy’.
Well they may have grown up in a small village but that didn’t prevent them getting hold of Krisiun, Morbid Angel & Carcass records by the sound of it and in the process carving out a slab of 10 tracks of quality death metal with quite a progressive edge to it. Now use of the word ‘progressive’ is usually banned & dismissed here at Eve Mansions…. along with ‘orchestral’, any musical genre with the word ‘post’ put before it….. but this is progressive in a similar way to their countrymen Loudblast… i.e. not smashing along at a million miles an hour for the whole record. The band, like Loudblast are not afraid to slow things down and groove and also throw in some jazzy bits (never gonna get that job with Rolling Stone am I?) in tracks like ‘Obf’.
Like I said, the guys sing in French and well…. I can’t be arsed to translate the lyrics but I’m pretty certain the usual death metal topics are nailed down in songs like ‘Organ Bath’ & ‘Cannibalism Airlines’.
The riffing of Jerome & Jordan is clean, precise & aggressive as hell yet still possesses enough groove to be really memorable in places especially on tracks like ‘Torture For Dummies’. Drummer Jean is pretty amazing with some appropriate blasting and weird time changes on songs like opener ‘Cadaveric Discharge’ (the guitar work on that track is very Dying Fetus by the way and that is a massive compliment obviously). The vocals of Clement are layered and in places reminiscent of Glen Benton at his best.
As a debut ‘Noise Of Obstinacy’ is pretty remarkable. Not bending to any wanky trends the young Frenchmen have crafted a solid album which is both super impressive on first playing but keeps you coming back for more, such is the variety & quality on offer.
Only downside is the crap cover art ….. shame.
All in though, very impressive and well worth a purchase if you like a bit of substance to your death metal and are fed up with br00tal slam shite.
(8/10 Mark Eve)
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