Glorior Belli - Meet Us At the Southern Sign

September 29, 2009

Reviewer: Matt

The follow up to their enjoyable 2007 effort Manifesting the Raging Beast, Meet Us At the Southern Sign sees France’s Glorior Belli further distancing themselves from the more traditional Swedish/French black metal hybrid sound of their debut by experimenting with dissonance and harmony, fully immersed in the hard rock motifs explored initially on the previous album.

The most obvious problem with Meet Us At the Southern Sign is the pacing.  Where Manifesting’s occasional forays into Sabbath inspired trudges were a welcome break from their mid-paced but unrelentingly fervent black metal, Meet Us… is dominated by repetitions of slow, odd-sounding riffs, with regrettably infrequently placed fast passages injecting energy into what unfortunately becomes a tiring listen by the halfway point.

Glorior Belli has certainly carved out a niche black metal hybrid.  The harmonization of bluesy leads with cyclical, dissonant trances a la countrymates Deathspell Omega, backed by thick and gravelly doom rock riffing, is a unique concept for a black metal fusion band, at least on paper.  However, the languid pacing, inconsequential drumming, and a startling dearth of rhythmic dynamism render this album a largely unsuccessful attempt to retrofit the black metal aesthetic to its very distant roots.  And where several individual tracks stand out as rocking, gloomy ballads that rival the intensity of some of today’s most accomplished traditional heavy metal revival bands, too often the dull pacing comes across as unenthusiastic and lazy, and the front-mixed layered rasping of the vocalist distracts from the meticulously constructed Lovecraftian atmosphere.

Glorior Belli have stumbled onto something worthwhile and with certain potential.  A reconsideration of the sonic exploration into supernatural paranoia and dread of early heavy metal through the lens of black metal’s nihilistic torment is an interesting and respectable venture, made even more intriguing because it inherently shuns Gothic theatrics and pretensions of progressiveness.  But the songwriting lags behind the ambition, and the potential remains largely unrealized.  Now that they’ve developed a sound, they can perhaps focus on improving their songwriting.

Release Date: June 2nd, 2009
Label: Candlelight Records

TRACK LISTING

1.  Once in a Blood Red Moon
2.  The Forbidden Words
3.  Swamp That Shame
4.  There is But One Light
5.  My True Essence
6.  In Every Grief-Stricken Blues
7.  Nox Illuminatio Mea
8.  The Blazing Darkness
     (Of Luciferian Skies)
9.  Fivefold Thought
10.  Fires of the Sitra Ahra
11.  Meet Us at the Southern Sign

Total playing time:  50:36

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