Band:	Ferriterium
Album:	Calvaire
Style:	Black metal
Release date:	January 2021

01. L'apostasie
02. La Proie Du Cloître
03. L'opéra De Géhenne
04. L'apogée Du Martyr

The French make some really passionate black metal once in a while.

France's contributions to the black metal world are pretty commonplace right now, from Les Légions Noires to Deathspell Omega's popularization of dissonance, Blut Aus Nord's industrial tinges, Alcest spawning blackgaze and whatever the hell Murmuüre's deal is. Trying to fit the essence of the French black metal scene into a single paragraph is pretty impossible, and its consistency, influence and variety are all worth the praise it gets. Though there is a lot of variety in it, there still is a common thread between a lot of the bands, and thus when I listened to Ferriterium's Calvaire, I didn't even need to check, I could tell that they're French.

Out of all the things that I reviewed, this one reminds me most of Cénotaphe's Monte Verità, even though there are clear differences, but the fact that they both share the trademarks of French traditional black metal. I guess the essence is a contrast between how melodic and how raw the black metal is at the same time. The music is very direct and clearly aggressive in true traditional black metal fashion, but the melodic flourishes are so direct as well that it creates a weird blend of emotions. It's crushing, but pleasant, it's depressing, but triumphant. Not always at the same time, but also not always separately. It certainly is a testament on how to add emotion through melody without compromising the raw appeal of black metal and without slipping into DSBM.

Ferriterium is, after all, a one-man band. Even though there are session musicians on drums and bass, the entirety of Calvaire feels very singular and less like a "chemistry between multiple people" thing. And with the album being structured as four songs each around 10 minutes in runtime, it takes a lot of effort to keep up the momentum, so there are portion where it kinda drags too much. Thankfully, there's a lot of dynamism in the riffs and passion in the vocals to keep the music from stalling, even with most of the time spent in faster paces. The wall of sound atmosphere that benefits a lot from the aforementioned melodicism is pretty enveloping for an album that is as blunt as this, but who really knows how to layer its components.

Overall, Calvaire manages to showcase a keen sense of melody and atmosphere, but it doesn't keep its momentum as well as it should.