SAMEN

This is pretty cheeky mindboggling stuff, as you should expect from the name of the band and album. There is a metal side to this, but it's not metal from beginning to end or even most of the time. Rather, heavy stuff pops up suddenly at some point in most songs and is sometimes wound down again before the listener knows it. A number of songs are metal dominated, but they come with the occasional interruption in other directions. Heavy can mean slow and fast, power and death, they do it all. Certainly they don't shy away from stark contrasts. Suddenly we get catchy art rock or even mainstream rock (No Doubt could be a reference), then again playful experimental stuff a la Mr Bungle (probably the closest association) with funk elements and theatrical elements, brought together with a RIO-like attitude to defy expectations as soon as they could occur.

A major selling point of this album is the female vocalist Asphodel. She is extremely flexible, she can do seductive, melodic rock, sharp, cheeky, evil, authoritative, sassy, rebellious., screwed up, arrogant, girly, opera, energetic, and heavy, all very convincingly. Her at times multilayered vocal arrangements are well crafted and adventurous. Her vocal work is supported by male bandmate Baptiste Bertrand in this role, who also contributes a remarkable number of styles including death growls.

The instrumention is very competent and inventive (particularly violin is used to good effect although I'm not quite sure whether it's sampled - it's hard to tell these days) if maybe a bit too perfectly polished. For all its craziness the music is pretty controlled and there is no space for improvisation.

Overall this is an astonishing album full of good ideas and striking contrasts. I recommend it to anyone who likes to be surprised and who wants to discover an extremely versatile and confident female singer. Those who rather want their music to be organic and homogeneous, stay away! Oh, I should maybe add some information: They hail from France, and are pronounced "chenille", which means caterpillar, and the official written form of the band name is just that. 4.3 stars.