FLEURETY
Fleurety
are the fathers of the post-black metal era, the first band that have got the
desire to look beyond the black sky, starting from the black roots of their
fascinating and astonishing 1993 demo “Black Snow”. Their debut, in 1995, is
a gem of black art, but not in the conventional way of thinking, it isn’t a
classic of the great Norwegian black metal tradition, but it bring that unique
music to another dimension. “Min Tid Skal Komme” (Vote 9.5) is a milestone
of avantgarde black metal
mixed with psychedelic, jazz and progressive rock. The Nordic spirit is deformed
still remaining in a cold, melancholic landscape. Every song is an incredible
chapter to live and listen to travel in distant valleys, solitary horizons of
meditation, an escape to everything normal. The nocturnal spirit of the
different musical genres are a force that works perfectly to reach the darkest
tunnels.
The female vocals have an incredible hypnotic power like the overall atmosphere,
it’s like an hallucination, and sometimes a sombre depressive trip. There
should be great musicians behind that work because the drums parts aren’t so
simple and it’s audible that they haven’t only a metal background, but a
wider spectrum on knowledge.
After
Misanthropy rec. comes to an end Fleurety got some problems with other labels
and only in ’98 they were able to release their next work, the incredible
mini-cd “Last Minute Lies” (Vote 9).
With the previous album it was clear that the direction of the Norwegian band
was to leave the black metal border, and the new cd showed how that change was
an excellent choice.
The psychedelic, jazz, and progressive rock elements are for another time, and
differently, with a more avantgarde mood, mixed together, the metal is less
present, and there’re only some gloomy and dark feeling of the black metal
root, and nothing more. The extremism of that band is inside their mind, the
music is sometimes a bit “absurd”, abstract, it’s normal to be surprised
in almost every song, and there’s a positive appearance of a nocturnal
saxophone that suites perfectly to the general feeling. The female vocals have
a much more important role than in the past, a main position, not only an
hypnotic objective like in “Min Tid…” and there’s a greet emotional
participation.
“Last Minutes” haven’t so much to do with metal and its standards,
it’s another thing, a new avantgarde dimension not so easy to be understood,
it’s like to leave
your sureness and fall in a dull ocean. Surprising and absolutely avantgarde
is the follower of that minicd, the “Department of Apocalytic Affairs” (Vote
8.5) album. The Norwegian duo have followed their mad instinct, and they’ve
released one of the most irreverent, disturbing and surprising type of
avantgarde music, a bit of metal together with jazz, psychedelic, progressive,
electro-dark influences worked together.
The result is a blasphemous form of music, where an abstract, dull atmosphere
captures the listener attention, landing into a corner of illusions,
surrounded by inhuman vision, in a maelstrom of hallucinations, a path without
sure points, in an endless fall. Every song have its strong personality and
differ from the others, the last is a calm and suffused with an enchanting
female voice. There is almost nothing of the melancholic and “ancient”
feeling of the debut, the sound is absolutely more modern, and futuristic. The
dominant bizarre and psychotic moods are linked to some calm and visionary
moments, in an explosive mix not too simple to understand. “Department…”
have surely an extremer edge and there are much more surprising changes on the
arrangements, “Last Minuets Lies” was after all much more linear, the new
one is more synthetic and experimental, with a colder electronic atmosphere,
but what will be the future of that crazy duo???