(((O))) Live: Regarde Les Hommes Tomber – Le Trabendo, Paris

Last Wednesday, audiences proved their hard-earned loyalty to sinister sounds. After two years of pushbacks, the post-black outfit Regarde Les Hommes Tomber was finally able to hold its album release show to a sold-out crowd of hungry metal ghouls. If you’ve ever wondered how the concept of “street cred” applies to the metal scene, getting a crowd of moody Parisians to overcome their intrinsically impaired sense of punctuality and squeezing them into a sweaty venue on a Wednesday evening of grim music is somewhat of a good sign that you’re getting somewhere.

Decline of the I. Photo: Robin Ono

Decline of the I did the honours of opening the show with an appetizing serving of Black Metal à la Française, served with a side dish of projected visuals from grim arthouse films. Grandiose, operatic, the band’s use of samples and interview snippets by French philosophes expands on black metal’s core precepts with a distinctly French flair. Though the addition of live visuals was an apt addition to the show, the band’s stage presence and performance were what kept the audience’s undivided attention. Whereas the band’s cinematic and non-linear compositions beckoned you into the band’s brooding world of existential angst and despair, lead vocalist S.I. kept you transfixed, making sure you felt every second of it.

Decline of the I. Photo: Robin Ono

Following a quarter-hour intermission came Regarde les Hommes Tomber. With the crowd pumped up and ready for the storm to break out, vocalist T.Chenu took to the stage clad like a nightrider fresh off a hobbit hunt. The stage, candlelit and basking in incense smoke, suddenly erupted to the thunderous blast beats introducing ‘A New Order’. The entire venue was engulfed in a tempest of overdriven riffs and tortured shrieks, overtaken by the sheer magnitude of the sound blasted through the speakers, spellbound by the vocalist’s hypnotic gestures and charisma. The stage titans ruled the packed room with an iron fist, not loosening their hold on the audience for a single moment. The band’s latest Ascension was honoured for tonight’s show, with six of the eight songs belonging to the band’s Season of Mist debut. With little or no breaks between songs averaging just short of the 10-minute mark, the set flowed seamlessly with surprisingly comfortable pacing that kept the show enjoyable from start to finish. The atmosphere eventually reached a boiling point near the last part of the evening, setting off a wild moshpit brawl. The band closed off their show with ‘Au Bord du Gouffre’ and lit torches to the ecstatic cries of rabid fans now fully possessed by the night’s demonic processions.

Regarde les Hommes Tomber. Photo: Robin Ono

Leaving the stage to the sound of Morbid Angel’s ‘Desolate Ways’ drowned by acclamations, Regarde Les Hommes Tomber signed off on a worthy, triumphant return to the French capital.

Regarde les Hommes Tomber. Photo: Robin Ono

Regarde les Hommes Tomber. Photo: Robin Ono