ARCHVILE KING – Aux Heures Désespérées – review – Black Metal

ARCHVILE KING – Aux Heures Désespérées – review
Les Acteurs de l’Ombre Productions

To France! To the metal!

Archvile King isn’t a band, it’s a one-man project formed in 2019 by multi-instrumentalist Baurus. Of course. You can’t use your real name in black metal. Probably get a prison term. Which is why so many of the black metal lads name themselves after minions of Satan, or mythological beasts. I’m looking at you Jeff, Conrad & Tony.

Sad to say, this fella seems to have named himself after a character from a role playing game called the Elder Scrolls. That’s definitely worth a spell in jail. Regardless, this is album number two, following on from the 2022 release, “À La Ruine”. No idea what that was all about, but fast forward to now, and here we are with “Aux Heures Désespérées”. In Desperate Hours to those of us who speak the Queens English.

What you’re getting is mash up of black metal, thrash metal, and an inventive use of synths. And it’s all rather good. Assuming you’re in the mood for harsh vocals and bleak concepts. They’re all here. ‘The Carnival of the King of Worms, ‘…And to Miserable Men’. Cheery stuff. I let my schoolboy French loose on some lyrics and it’s all;

“Water my fields with your flesh
Flayed alive, on their knees
Driven out, poor wretches
Something healthy in the massacre
Fills the air, empties the arteries”.

That’s the game!

This isn’t a world where pixies dance around buttercups. This is heavy fucking metal. Raw, heavy metal which might have fallen into a deep hole full of raw, heavy metal. But the keyboard touches are what lift it out of the mire. They sometimes disappear into the mix, but just when you need something to grab your attention, there they are. A top job, that.

Oh, hang on. Lovecraft time.
“A mass of appendages, moving under the shrouds
They meander and move, in slippery metaphors
Drink, feed, pull effortlessly”.

It’s often the case in a one man band that something lets the side down. Often it’s the drums, somethimes the vocals. But this lad manages to pull it off. There isn’t really a weak link. For sure, the drums aren’t always in the right part of the mix. But they’re there. And it’s supposed to be a bit raw. That’s the point. He’s also really good at knowing when to slow things down, before launching back into a full throated death roar.

There are some tremendous old school riffs interspersed throughout the songs. Oh, hang on, he’s currently “Prostrate before horror, stared at by death”. That’s not good. The record is a fine example of its genre. Granted, the basic structure is nothing new, but the synth and mood work is what makes it worthy of your attention.

It is available to purchase on the internet.