Dispensing with the grand operatic flourishes of his primary project, the French musician known only as Hazard has summoned up the album Malivore, the first under the new, more traditionally black metal minded moniker Hasard. There is no brooding quasi-orchestral intro here, no setting the scene or toying with the nerves: this leaps straight into a twisted, nightmarish world of dissonant blasting and relentless aural violence.
The aura of horror conjured on Malivore is exquisitely tempered, a suffocating atmosphere shaped by the dense wall of sound that closes around the listener, giving them neither time nor space to think, to breath even. A few dramatic flairs emerge from the flurry of madness, but these are infrequent and offer little in the way of respite, the shadow on the wall in the flicker of light before the roar begins again.
There is nuance, depth to the onslaught throughout Malivore, an understanding that just being noisy is not enough to sustain the mood for the duration. Hasard treads that fine line between continuity and repetition with a delicacy that is not so common in the scene. The result is a record that flows, feeling whole as a singular piece of music without it becoming too predictable or wearisome. This is a real treat for those who prefer a soupçon of the overdramatic on the darker side of life.
