Band: Svart Crown
Title: Witnessing The Fall
Label: Listenable Records
Distribution: Suburban - Bertus
Release date: Autumn 2010
Review: CD

The French project (nowadays a ‘real’ band, including well-known drummer Gaël Barthélemy - think Balrog, Inheritance, Celtic Blood, Antaeus, Diabolic etc) was formed in 2005 by J.B. Lebail with the idea ‘to push the boundaries of extreme music and create a new dimension of brutality and blackness’. He released a debut album in early 2008, called Ages Of Decay, and with some session and guest musicians, he started touring, especially in his home country, as well as throughout Europe. Slowly the one-man project evolved into a band, and with the recruitment of permanent members, Svart Crown were able to grow even further.

As a band, Svart Crown recorded the second full length at St Marthe Studio with Francis Caste, known from Arkhon Infaustus, Phazm, Kickback etc., with a rather organic-sounding result. And in this case, the ‘natural’ approach was the best option. Luckily, because the symbiosis of both old stylish and modern elements comes to its best balanced equilibrium this way. And in spite of the organic result, the album certainly comes with injections of Post-Black obscurity (especially within the slower parts). The forty six minutes long album opens with a short instrumental intro, Where The Light Ends, and then it continues where Ages Of Decay left off. This means that Witnessing The Fall stands for extremely oppressive and kinetic Black Metal with a sulphuric stench and a freezing temperature. The album is a beast, an angry, blood-thirsty one, not willing to make compromising, not willing to give in one single moment. Each single track comes with a suffocating feeling of fury and hate, mainly including a somewhat epic, glorious finalisation. The atmosphere slightly dwells within funereal atmospheres, defining the hymns as barbarian, misty and mystic.

Witnessing The Fall is another superb expression of France’s excellence within the grimmest regions of the Black Metal scene. Together with, for example, Way To End, Merrimack, Temple Of Baal, Glorior Belli, Blut Aus Nord, Aosoth, Hell Militia, Lantlôs, Manzer, Alcest or Quintessence, almost all of them reviewed on the site, Svart Crown complete the list with superior French material recorded/ released lately.

84/100

Ivan Tibos.