Saturday, July 16, 2011

Regional Focus: France

Of France's many fine cultural exports - cheese, wine, cinema - popular music tends to be left behind. Seriously, name a popular artist from France. Celine Dion? Nope, Quebecois - a Francophone, to be sure, but not French, and all her hits are in English. French pop tanks outside of Francophone nations, probably because it's in goddamn French. Spanish doesn't have nearly as much trouble - Latin singers exist aplenty in the states rather than wallowing in relative obscurity/American scorn.

So some boys from Avignon decided they needed to get métal en tant que baise

The metal scene out of France is small but it's gaining rapidly. 2010 in particular was a great year for the French Black Metal Scene. Apparently they learned a little something from all those viking raids out of Norway and Sweden a few hundred years ago, ie, dress yourselves up in corpse-paint and scream over buzzsaw guitars and the vikings will think you're one of their own. I'm a fan of the following:

Gojira
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5By-5mLHk4

Alcest (art-house shoegaze metal)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dwrrLb-uJQ

Celestia
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PwGSebQA70

Temple of Baal (one of my current favorites)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9B_EbkevFM

Blut Aus Nord
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRZyUmk7vsQ

Deathspell Omega
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIPSqcGj--I

\m/

Chop

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