Band:	Maïeutiste
Album:	Maïeutiste
Style:	Black metal, Doom metal
Release date:	September 2015

01. Introductions...
02. ...In The Mirror...
03. Reflect / Disappear
04. Purgatoire
05. The Fall
06. Absolution
07. The Eye Of Maieutic Art
08. Lifeless Visions
09. Death To Free Thinkers
10. Annonciation
11. Death To Socrates

For starters, appy-polly-logees to Maïeutiste for taking so long to draft this review. I've spent some time with the album now, spinning it, enjoying it and the words just haven't come to me. Yeah, it's taken me nearly as long to review their self-titled release as the five plus years or so it took them to record it.

Let's start with the easy part. Frenchies Maïeutiste play black metal. A point they make abundantly clear immediately upon the conclusion of the introductory track, "Introductions" when "?In The Mirror" blasts off with "BLLLEAARRGH!" screeches, necro riffing, and a puff of brimstone.

What makes Maïeutiste, and thus Maïeutiste interesting is that they play black, but get max mileage of their bus pass and freely travel all over the realm of Blackmetalstan. They don't even finish the "?In The Mirror" before dropping the tempo down and tossing in some spoken bits and rather Garm-like Olde Tyme Ulver vox.

"Reflect - Disappear" starts with a rather straightforward black-n-roll beat a la Satyricon, before going none more black, while "Purgatoire" sees them sneak over the border to the Hypnotic States of Ambien(t), before that tune drifts to just an acoustic guitar.

This continues on for the rest of the release, shifting subgenres, a three-day weekend stay at an airBNB in The Republic of Doom, then back in black. Er, to be clear, back to black rather. They didn't have money in the budget for the airline tix to the Thunder(struck) from Down Under.

Like good travelers, every aspect of the journey is well documented. Only instead of a long-as-fuck slideshow or facebook pic gallery only really interesting to the travelers, you get your earholes violated in well executed fashion.

I guess I've had problems trying to wrap my head around how to write about this because it does cover so much ground rather than just grab you by the short curlies and scream "BLACK FUCKING METAL! SATAM! EXPLOSIONS! CAR CHASES! FIREBALLS! CGI MICHAEL BAY EFFECTS!" Although full credit for song titles like "Death To Free Thinkers" and "Death To Socrates."

It's easy to describe a car chase as exciting. It's much harder to explain the beauty and wonders of a six-hour cross-country bus ride. Not that this 70 minute or so album *feels like* a six-hour ordeal.

So yeah, I enjoyed it. And rather than spend another five years getting the wording as well-crafted as their songs, I just sort of bashed this one. You know, before their next release is unleashed upon us all.

Fuck my review, just go check it out. Le Camp du Band.