Glorior Belli has it all – the cool name, the knack for great imagery and a few cracking albums under its belt. Add to that a potentially intoxicating obsession with Bayou blues, slide guitar and black metal, and it’s a formula that works on paper so well I dare say they’ve sold more than a few albums without a note being heard. All the band, or I should say main man Billy Bayou (aka Infestvvs), has to do now is not fumble the ball. But teetering on the edge of greatness can also be precarious place to be. Because after almost nailing this whole thing together into a glowing monument to these two great stylistic forces – southern blues rock and black metal – the last one or two albums have been regarded by some as own goals, booting the ball straight through the back of the net and into a gator-infested lagoon.
Indeed it’s almost as if, as time has gone by, the two sides of the band’s personality have struggled to coexist as easily as they should. It feels like the band’s been treading water. Has Billy got something to prove this time round? Well, it sure feels like it. Because this is a gator gobbling, cousin shagging, serial killin’ tribute to Louisiana darkness but fettered by the demonic black soul of French black metal. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, if the two halves of the band were struggling to coexist and there has been a battle for dominance, guess who won? The southern influences may still be there but tempered down to an inspired degree but the black wings have been allowed to unfurl.
Indeed, if our French front man’s two pseudonyms represent the two sides of his musical personality, then it sounds like Infestvvs is back in town with sharpened talons, while Billy Bayou went home after the Cajun chicken wings to catch the latest episode of Dexter. Because Sundown burns and rages in a way that makes you feel Billy has been trying too hard to fit square pegs into round holes and his true nature is now back.
First of all let me say, this feels like he’s been steeping himself in the French scene. Sundown has all the urgency of last year’s De Praestigiis Angelorum by VI (also on Agonia and courtesy of members of Aosoth and Antaeus). Admittedly, this is a little less maniacal and amphetamine-driven but, helped along by the power of Infestvvs’s vocals, its more muscular and I’ll warrant there are shared studios producers or some such other involved (even the colour scheme on the cover is familiar). There are hints of Billy’s obsession with the old southern rock twanging – Rebels in Disguise, for example, is one track where it is most evident. The following track too, Thrall of Illusions, toys with flagrant use of slide guitar, but even here the black metal runs thick in the veins. But it’s here too that Sundown begins to really crank up the intensity as those incessant, buzzing riffs and pent-up, supercharged tremolo outro take hold.
But Sundown doesn’t stop there. The title track ruptures through the speakers in a hail of snapping snares before settling into a chanting, simmering loop that lets you bathe in the chorus. The remaining tracks batter and bulldoze the band’s way through the second half of the album in relentless fashion. Sundown stays true to the band’s stated purpose by setting the bayou ablaze and bringing down darkness in its blackest form. It’s as if no-one told Billy that his band’s chips were down. Or maybe they did. Because Glorior Belli has risen to the challenge and come back fighting with its best album in years, maybe ever. If Billy, Infestvvs, or whatever he’s calling himself these days has anything to prove – consider it done.
(9/10 Reverend Darkstanley)
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