MISANTHROPE „Libertine Humiliations”

Really great effort by this French guys. This band can be described as Avant Garde metal (or Sophisticated Metal hehehe). They have a lot of fusions and styles in their music, principally melodic death metal (similar in some parts to dark tranquillity 'gallery'-'minds I' era), classic heavy metal and progressive and technical stuff, ending in a clean and riffstatic goteburg sound (as usual when an album is recorded in Fredman Studios and by Fredrik Nordström).

This album starts with a little intro full of ambient things by a keyboard, and then, a great riff given by the opening track “Misanthrope Necromancer”! A great track who have a real hooky chorus ( i am the misanthrope necromancer,Coroner of the unjust dead!…). After this opening, you can greet your ears with a lot of fantastic riffs and melodies through the whole album. They even use blast beats (“at 666 days…” and “Crisis of soul” as examples) bringing a more extreme approach to the sound. Another distinctive aspect is the semigutural voice of S.A.S de L'Argiliere who sound kind of “elegant” and different with their french accent. A very complete album, full of power. The only complaint is that there are some beautiful keyboard arrays that i think will sound better in the forefront (i.e. like in the end of “L'écume Des Chouans”).

By the way, the lyrics are in english and french and are really twisted.

To finalize the album, track 10 appears with the name of “Humiliations Libertines”. It starts with a doomy sound 'a la anathema-celtic frost' then transforming into a Melodic death effort with a cool catchy chorus and a little bit of blast beats between, ending in a similar way it started.

If you are in bands like Solefald,”old” Dark Tranquillity or Cynic, this is an album you have to get (and if you have it already, congratulations! you are a real connoisseur =)).