Testament

Label: Gazul/Musea
Category: Music

Average customer rating:

Media: Audio CD
Number Of Discs: 1

UPC: 742630086657
EAN: 0742630086657
ASIN: B0000BZFQ6

Release Date: 2003-08-06

Testament

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C'Etaient De Tres Grands Vents

Album Description

Unclassifiable and with boundless originality, SHUB-NIGGURATH blends influences of MAGMA, ART ZOYD, UNIVERS ZERO and KING CRIMSON with echoes of PENDERECKI. From this unique alchemy comes a feverish, violent, intense and dark music in which the listener can sometimes hear anguished female vocals and a Robert FRIPP-like guitar. The relatively classical instruments used (Harmonium, guitar, bass, drums & trombone) blend with strange metal sheets sounds when those are either hit or scraped. Reissued by the label Gazul, the first album "Les Morts Vont Vite" (1986) is now considered a timeless classic. Issued five years later, "C'Etaient De Grands Vents" was recorded by a band reduced to four members only. At this occasion, the line-up from Paris had gone even further into dissonance and contemporary music, abandoning thus all rhythmic patterns and harmonies. "Testament" (2003) is the last musical testimony by SHUB-NIGGURATH. The musicians decided to issue those last compositions as a tribute to one of them, recently deceased. Here are then ten tracks that can be classified among the most radical and daring as far as experimenting is concerned. The proof will have been made, one ast time, that SHUB-NIGGURATH was indeed a major band in contemporary music.

Customer Reviews:

Don't expect another "Les Morts Vont Vite"........2005-12-04

This is very different from Les Morts Vont Vite, and may be a bit of a shock in comparison. Whereas their first album is comparable (distantly) to Magma, this is in the same realm as King Crimson's Thrakattak. Compare Thrakattak with Red and you have roughly the same relation as between Testament and Les Morts Vont Vite. Arc fills the same position in Neil Young's discography. The gist being, this is noisy, inchoate, improvised. I like it, but then again I also like Arc and Thrakattak.

Were I to rank Shub Niggurath's albums, I would have Les Morts Vont Vite first, Testament a close and somewhat incomparable second, and the album that came between--C'etaient de Très Grands Vents--a more distant third. C'etaient de Très Grands Vents occupies a stylistic middle ground between the other two but achieves the grandeur of neither; get it if you love the other two and want more.

A Band with Dark Intent Indeed!.......2005-10-14

Their name is in homage to H. P. Lovecraft's fictional goat-like monstrosity, she who lives under the deep, "with her thousand young." This band is truly incredible. Along with Art Zoyd, the best music in the rock era to ever come out of France. But the intensity here is darker, at times really frightening (try listening with the lights out). For all its dissonance, I find this does not hurt my ears. Besides some sporadic pieces by M. Gira, it's simply the evilest s*** I've ever heard, and I have over 2,500 CDs. And there's a movement here not on the other two albums -- a frenzied clattering toward the inevitable, which begins to feel like something worse than hell. Also a sense that they've by now managed to arouse the hideous beast from its "rest" and are paying for it. Mind you, no words are here, to make things corny; it's the music that speaks the unspeakable. It succeeds. In spades!

Not quite what I was hoping for........2005-09-02

I was expecting something a bit more dense and penetrating from this album, based on my limited experiences with their previous effort. I do enjoy listening to it, but the work tends toward a minimalism that makes it a bit less engaging than I had hoped. It IS interesting listening, and worth purchasing as long as you don't pay an outrageous price for it. For a more detailed description of the music, try the allmusic review, which is fairly accurate.

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