Les Chants du Hasard
Self-Titled
(I, Voidhanger Records)
For me as a music writer, there is no greater trap than the tyranny of my own tastes. Part of what gets a writer writing about music is having accelerated tastes but it can also hamper in an equal degree. It is best to learn how to get out of your own way.
I, Voidhanger Records out of Italy bills itself as “uncompromising visions from the Metal Underground” and nowhere is that more truthful than on Les Chants du Hasard, an experiment by Hazard, a single instrumentalist whose vision is create a black metal album without the traditional instruments. That’s right, meaning, no guitars, no bass and no drums. It’s black metal without the form’s core elements.
I’ll run the flag out right now and wave: Les Chants du Hasard is not for me. I am definitely not the target audience for this record, a cinematic array of orchestral strings, screams and chants, punctuated by medieval instruments. The tortured death wails and operatic on “Le Soleil” are outright nauseating; on “L’Homme” the chains and bells made me think of the boat scene in Les Miserables, too far afield where I was experiencing the album; maybe my favorite song are the ones with the broadest range of strings, “L’Enfant” and “Le Dieu” which settles into what feels like the conceptual belly of the catacombs. On these tracks, I feel as though Hazard achieved the most successful test of his hypothesis but Les Chants du Hasard is more prismatic than a single beam of light; it cannot be one thing, which again speaks to its successes. It’s a black metal record, but it’s also theme music or mood setting backdrop. While this isn’t my taste, that doesn’t mean Les Chants du Hasard does not work. What Hazard has done on this six-track album is extend the boundaries of his form to extremes.
Get out of your own way, thanks to whoever told me that. My taste is, after all, only my taste and each time through this record, I am struck at how it teases and entices and challenges me to engage. You won’t find a more boundary-stretching album in 2017.
