Darkenhöld - Le fléau du rocher (2025)

While they're still not very well known outside of their home region,  Darkenhöld is one of the top and most consistent bands performing French black metal of a Medieval/fantastical nature, and their sixth album Le fléau du rocher continues to elevate their presence with a flowing, slightly adventurous sense to the songwriting. That's not to imply that it's a major evolution beyond what they'd created for the last few, but I don't ever get the sense that they're repeating themselves; the basics are the same, but they're presenting new melodies and rhythmic structures and the result is the sort of escapism I think a lot of fans of fantasy based black metal might enjoy. They're not quite as seethingly historical as Aorlhac or bleedingly melodic as Vehemence, two of their most obvious parallels, but they occupy a balanced middle ground.

Lots of lush acoustics and synthesizers are implemented to complement the tremolo-picked charging of the guitars, while the drums are also a dominant force here with lots of intense fills and thundering, almost martial sounding patterns that boost the sense of anachronism and escapism. The riffing patterns are not always cold and bleak or dissonant, but rather glorious and warm as they highlight myths and battles and sorcery. Guitars don't always bore into your ears with the most memorable progressions, as you've heard a lot of them before, but I think they do a grand job at mixing together folk-like Medieval vibes with the darker Scandinavian black metal mysteries, and fine leads or melodies will break out gallivanting through tunes like "Le cortège royal" or the title track. They can pick up on the intensity a bit with "L'ascension du mage noir" or do something more mug-swilling in "Troubadour" which might have been the product of some more directly folk metal band, with the deep male chants.

Granted, the more in that direction the music ever aims with this album, it does feel slightly more generic, I actually prefer when they get darker or use the synths to create an almost dungeon synth/black metal hybrid, but all of it is handled in a balance so the record never grows dull. The vocals are a fairly standard rasp, but you do get some of those aforementioned choirs for some variation. Although this record is more musically developed than previous, I don't know that it stands out for me as much as a Castellum or their 2010 debut A Passage to the Towers..., but Darkenhöld has never released a dud, and if you've enjoyed their other records, or the aforementioned countrymen, or others like Griffin and Seth from that same scene, then you'll probably appreciate the effort these guys have been meting out for the last 15+ years.

Verdict: Win [7.5/10]

https://darkenhold.bandcamp.com/

Darkenhöld/Griffon - Atra Musica (2019)

Always a pleasure to hear something new from Darkenhöld, one of the more consistent and consistently unsung acts on the French black metal scene, and in Griffon they have been paired up with another band that share their fancy for integrating the Medieval and antiquated aesthetics into their music without ever losing the style's core, traditional identity. Each of the bands offers four tracks here on Atra Musica, with the Griffon material clocking in longer due to some heftier cuts. I'd have to say that stylistically the pair are a good match on the release in some ways, or at least they WOULD be if Darkenhöld were performing something more akin to what is on their full-length albums...but here they have taken on a curious, almost more experimental folk edge to their material.

Essentially they're using a lot of cleaner guitars to represent what would normally be their heavier electric riffs, but keeping the vocals just as harsh as ever. It evokes a strange contrast, but one that becomes quite fascinating as you progress through their contributions. It's almost as if they had decided to put out a pure folk/acoustic EP and decided it would be better to include it as part of this split, but I'm not at all let down by the material, as it's super atmospheric and the vocals really drift over the busy clean strings in a menacing, obscure way. A Medieval Peste Noire? If they went in this direction for a longer record I would certainly be on board for checking it out, because all of their other traits are still present and there's enough variation and fertility of ideas due to the acoustic choice while it doesn't actually lack for sounding as majestic as they have when they're more 'plugged in'. On the other hand, Griffon is fully plugged in, and I think there's a contrast between the two bands' productions which might have served the split release better had it been smoothed over a little...

So the first half of this release is much louder, brighter, harsher in nature, with walls of force blasted sequences graced over by Romantic, winding tremolo picked guitars and all manner of voices that range from a nasty black metal rasp to cleaner, more narrative chants that sound quite cool in French. The riffing is quite busy, not always catchy but changing up the moods enough that it feels rich in its textures, and the rhythm section also sounds quite good, with dreamy bass lines and effortless blasts or double-kick breakdowns with a lot of splash to support the well-woven melodies. I do think the lead rasp is a little bit overbearing at times and sounds a smidgeon too nihilistic for the music itself, but overall there's just enough going on that I kept paying attention, and I dug the 'Interlude' which is all orchestra/organ and makes an interesting transition into Darkenhöld's less aggressive but equally elaborate material. Apart from the differences in volume and approach, which don't make for the most flush or consistently appealing split recording, the music here is all quite good. I wouldn't go at this for your first Darkenhöld exposure, any of their first three full-lengths would be the better choice, but they take a risk here which ultimately pays off.

Verdict: Win [7.5/10]

https://www.facebook.com/griffonblackmetal
https://www.facebook.com/Darkenhold/

Darkenhöld - Castellum (2014)

Castellum is the most straight-to-the-face of the Darkenhöld discography, choosing to eschew some glistening Medieval acoustic or synthesizer intro to savage the listener immediately with a strong, scorching eight minutes of "Strongholds Eternal Rivalry". Don't mistake me, within that track's parameters, there is already plenty of dynamic range, from the blasted Scandinavian verses into the more swaggering, mid-paced glorious chorus which sounds like you're rounding up a posse of disavowed knights to ride down and bring low some border lord's castle and militia. There are some nice acoustics in the bridge, with a cool, lightly fuzzed bass line, but it sets a reliable, slate-gray tone to how this album is going to sound as it celebrates the magnificent stone walls of the cover edifice.

The rest is business as usual, which is not a bad thing for one of France's greatest tributes to the Dark Ages, and Castellum is probably the least fantastical of their output, with tunes like "Le castellus du moine brigand" genuine historical references in their lyrics. It's also one of their best produced, along with the debut. Guitars have a nice crunch to them but also sound great streaming chords along to the faster drum tempos, and you can hear all the upper strings being struck to portray a few glimpses of atmosphere. The bass lines are tucked right under the rhythm guitar, and not doing anything terribly interesting, but they diverge just enough to matter in the context of the album's atmosphere. The synthesizers are as usual very well implemented, not too subtle but never brazen or disruptive to the metallic components. You very often feel like you're charging around a courtyard or a mountainside while the sunlight is gleaming down upon your armor. Cervantes' rasp here is not too far at the forefront, but it sounds just as good if not better than their other albums, and his delivery can get good and nasty to accompany a glorious piece like the thundering of "Glorious Horns".

You do get a dungeon synth-like, minimally percussive interlude in "Feodus Obitus" and the excellent, shining finale "Medium Aevum", but otherwise it's about 38 minutes of majestic and determined black metal which never thrives on being the fastest or meanest, but instead locks itself in canter with the atavistic imagery portrayed. There are some truly effective moments, like the melodies in "The Bulwarks Warlords" or the mystique-building depths of "L'incandescence Souterraine", but there's not a bad track among the bunch, and next to A Passage to the Towers... I think this is their best work, although all four of the full-lengths thus far have been in the same ballpark quality. Wholly traditional black metal baptized by just the proper amount of cinematic grace through the keys, and the Medieval trappings are something I'll never grow tired of.

Verdict: Win [8.25/10] (vigilant winds assemble)

https://www.facebook.com/Darkenhold/

Darkenhöld - Echoes from the Stone Keeper (2012)

While not advancing the band's purview far beyond it's debut, Echoes from the Stone Keeper was a fine sophomore effort which continued to channel the mythistorical Dark Age consciousness into the 90s European black metal medium, fantasy and folklore into gnarled, atmospheric black metal that holds firmly to both its cultural and musical traditions. It might not dazzle as much as its predecessor in terms of 'surprise', hearing this great idea for the very first time as I did with A Passage to the Towers, but the necessary steps are taken to cement the band's style and penchant for solid, well-laid-out compositions which transport the listener, preferably the atavistic European individual or someone across the sea who wishes he or she were such, into grim landscapes of stone, forest and steel, where there was no cellphone onto which you could scream during your inevitable beheading by some errant knight or highwayman en route to some plague-infested berg.

It's a thicker sounding, blockier album than the first, as if levels were being tweaked between the instruments to try and even them out, and some slight calamity occurred as a result. Don't get me wrong here, Echoes is still quite listenable, but the dynamic range of its Passage was superior to my ears, and remains so, since I went back and listened to it before tackling the rest of their catalog. On a stylistic standpoint, this is very much that mid-90s style of black metal pioneered largely by bands out of Norway who early on applied symphonic elements as complements to the guitars. You could trace it back to Emperor, Limbonic Art, Old Man's Child, and their ilk, good influenced to have as they permit Darkenhöld to truly manifest the archaic, haunted majesty of their lyrical themes. The riffing here is quite solid, perhaps not always so unique but shifting about often enough that there is no real boredom anywhere, with tight-cropped tracks that don't their heads to spawn mediocre 'epics' that lack the ideas to fill them. Drums sound tight and appropriately crashy, while the guitar tone itself is good, the synths are laid out just right behind it all and the vocalist's rasp slithers right thru to coil itself around the listener's bewitched ears.

It's only when it all fires off at once that I sensed a little bit of clip or excessive evenness which robbed some of the individual components of their power potential. Sometimes the keys would shine forward a little much for the strength of the guitars, and so forth, but I'm such an admirer of this style and where it takes me mentally that it's not a great obstacle. The 'dungeon synth' like intro pieces, "Subterranean Corridor" and "Interlude" are well enough made, but perhaps not as catchy as the keys used in some of the proper metal tunes, and not as good as those Darkenhöld has used on some of its other albums. For this album, the more the band takes risk and provides evil riffing, the better the tunes seem to be, as in "Chasm of Asylake", but they hit a lot of mid-paced Blood Fire Death style sequences adorned with eerie symphonics or pianos that I also found quite agreeable. The lyrics are also worthwhile, whether you're into fantastical creatures ("Wyvern Solitude Chant") or alchemy ("Under the Sign of Arcanum"). All told, I'd say this ranked as their third best album, quite good but not as impressive as the debut or the album that would follow it in 2014.

Verdict: Win [8/10]

https://www.facebook.com/Darkenhold/

Ossuaire/Ysengrin/Aorlhac/Darkenhöld - La Maisniee du Maufe - A Tribute to the Dark Ages (2011)

I'm years late checking out this four-way split, but as a fan of three of the four French bands participating on my way into it, I figured it was just about mandatory. The common thread running through the creators here, apart from the shared nationality, is that they all have some devotion among their own projects to atavism, diving into the distant past for lyrical and musical inspiration, and I feel this micro scene, more prevalent in Europe than my own USA, offers a cool counterbalance to the more modernized strains of black or death metal which head off towards more progressive ideals. I also thought the layout for the split album was interesting: at about 31 minutes, three of the four bands all feature an instrumental intro or outro along with a harder, metallic track.

All three of these instrumentals consist of a clean guitar component, with Aorlhac's album opener being the most purely rustic and folksy, pure acoustic bliss. Darkenhöld's is a little more dingy and tribal, with some ambient sounds hovering just at the crest of the guitars. The finale of the split, Ysengrin's "Herege", features some electric guitar along with the acoustic, and cedes into a more funereal synth as it comes to its close. All three of these pieces were very well done, highlights of the recording, and for their small differences flow together rather well with one another and the slightly divergent styles of the bands. Fortunately, just about everything else on offer is also worthwhile, from Aorlhac's savage, riffy "Les charognards et la Catin", to Darkenhöld's mid-paced, evil piece and fittlingly titled "Eerie Plain at Dawn", to Ysengrin's morbid amalgamation of death, doom, heavy and black metal "La Procession Noire" with its more atmospheric, guttural vocals and weird, snaking riffs and leads. Each of these tunes is quite fluid with what the band was releasing individually at the time, and like a lot of their material easy for the Dark Age headbanger trapped in the 21st century to lose oneself in.

Ossuaire was new to me, but their sole track also seems like a microcosm of what their peers had on exhibition, with some acoustic guitars that transmute into some chunky, dissonant black/death metal with, yet again, guttural vocals rather than the black rasps that you'll hear from the first two bands on the split. I did think this tune was okay, but perhaps my own issue was the dingy, dissonant tones and overall production once the heavier sections kicked in stood out a little much from the rest. Some of the style here reminded me a lot of another French band, Suppuration, which is cool, and I did like this enough that I'll track down their 2010 full-length Mortes Fables at some point to check it out, but I'd say of any of the selections for this release, it was probably the one I would have cut out to make the rest flow a little more smoothly. That aside, and its a minor gripe at best, La Maisniee du Maufe is a very cool release which delights for much of its runtime. France has by far one of the best scenes in all black metal these years, and even though the bands included on this would be considered second or third 'tier', they are all well worth hearing, following and supporting.

Verdict: Win [8/10]

https://www.facebook.com/ysengrin.official/
https://www.facebook.com/Aorlhac
https://www.facebook.com/Darkenhold/

Darkenhöld - Memoria Sylvarum (2017)

I've been drawn into Darkenhöld's brand of glorious, melancholic Medieval black metal since the very debut, and for years now they have been cementing themselves as a paragon of escapism. Though they play in a far more traditional vein than the 'Big Three' of the French scene (or at least my own 'Big Three'), they are with ease one of the more consistent in the 'second tier', and like their countrymen Belenos and Aorlhac there's a historical spin to the chosen themes, although this particular band dresses it up in a fantastical element. Essentially they're one of those black metal acts which would find appeal for dungeon synth fans, and vice versa, although their own exploration of that divergent style is limited to a very small fraction of their albums. Still, if you dream of castle walls, long rides across cold moors, or any other idyllic Middle Age aesthetics to permeate your black metal, then it's hard to imagine you wouldn't at least get something from their albums.

Musically the focus is on mid-90s black metal riffing, an admixture of scathing rhythms, dim chord choices and occasional swings into full-on, ale-pounding majesty that come out of left field. The mix of the album is very even, with the guitars, bass, drums, synths and nasty snarling of the frontman 'Cervantes' complementing rather than fighting with one another in the speakers. It's a firm medium between the rawer elements of the genre, and the more overly produced, big budged offerings of the Scandinavian luminaries and mainstays. The atmosphere is created through the graying moods of the guitars, adorned with organs and other synthesizer effects which fit them perfectly. There is one brief interlude piece called "La Grotte de la Chêvre d'Or" which you could consider full-on dungeon style synth, but otherwise the band is heavily guitar driven, with a heavy use of acoustic guitars that are seamlessly integrated along with distorted lines when they're not appearing alone. Some of the riffs are quite good, with occasional drifts into leads or melodies that stand independently of the rhythm section, but to be honest there are a number of forgettable or overly familiar patterns that would not stand out whatsoever if not for the sum atmosphere created on the album.

The snarl is quite good, but also akin to many you've heard before, so I'm thankful that they also do include some soaring, background choral vocals that make it sound like it's being broadcast at you from some mountain monastery. Memoria Sylvarum also keeps most of its tunes reined in at around 4-5 minutes, so they aren't so headstrong to think they can cycle endless waves of repetitive riffing at you in a vainglorious attempt to seem epic or profound. With a couple exceptions, Darkenhöld just charges into battle, as a convocation of black knights attending a joust, and then doesn't wear out its welcome, providing the listener an atavistic portal into his or her own fantasy. It's almost elegant apart from how it does occasionally deliver the savagery of the earlier albums by acts like Midvinter or Old Man's Child. While it's not my favorite of the albums they've put out to date, this does not disappoint, it's only marginally less engaging to me than A Passage to the Towers or Castellum, and yet again secures a catalog of consistency for a band that, Franc-ly, is not spoken of nearly as often as they deserve. Sorry for the terrible pun, it appears my jestering skills need some dusting off.

Verdict: Win [7.75/10]

https://www.facebook.com/Darkenhold/

Darkenhöld - A Passage to the Towers... (2010)

There is this pervasive conception, oftentimes a mockery of the black metal genre that it's a haven for cloak wearing psychos, introverts and cellar dwellers hidden from the world, perhaps so far into the occult or fantasy that they're disconnected from the humdrum mediocrity of the modern, tabloid world. To some this translates into endless Youtube videos of Immortal performing pop songs, memes of irony for spastic teenagers and the adults who lovingly forget not to be them anymore. Of course, this is a stereotype which doesn't always find purchase in a musical genre which has been stretched to space, below the Earth, and in nearly every conceivable direction, but I suppose I should insert a confession:

I like the castles. I like the cloaks. I like war and corpse painted, iconoclastic figures wielding weapons and spikes in the coldest forest available. Has it gotten tired, or played out by the year 2010? Almost definitely. But there's just some tangible, impossible majesty to it all that has tipped off endless imaginations (and with any movement, hatred). The reason I mention all this blathering is because the French band Darkenhöld seems such a perfectly glorious proponent of the grandiose, the unreal, the archaic and arcane. Their debut is A Passage to the Towers... not only in name, but in content, for these tracks fire up the synapses and open gates directly to the harbored, lofty spaces standing abandoned in the soul, through streaming, ripping melodic black metal that recalls Immortal and early Emperor, or other acts that retroactively herald the ancient habitats of kings and conquerors.

There is nothing quite 'new' about what they bring to the genre, they're simply very effective at what has been manufactured previously. A Passage to the Towers... collects the material from the band's previous splits, and splices it in with newer compositions for a truly consistent and wondrous experience with excellent production, memorable guitar lines and the ghastly if typical rasp of 'Cervantes' (once of fellow Frenchmen Artefact). Synthesizers drift across the horizon, and the thirst for uplifting black metal is very easily quenched with the surging "Citadel of Obsidian Slumber", the warlike awnings of "Marble Bestiary", or the cavalier charge of "Chains of the Wyvern Shelter". Fantastic images of castles and mythological beasts tower upon the listener, relics of an epoch not of history, but of unfettered imagination running free.

It's not quite what one might expect of most French music of its type, hailing from a land of the unusual and surreal sounds of Deathspell Omega, Blut Aus Norde, and Peste Noire, but its effective in an entirely different light. You get the same feeling listening to this as you do when the cameras pan across the vast landscapes in fantasy films like Lord of the Rings, or the more moody and minimal majesty of Summoning, though Darkenhöld are somewhat louder and more accessible, cautiously merging each melody within the constriction of its aggressive blast beats or pinnacle climbing keyboards. There's nothing 'silly' about the album, necessarily, but it's a great pleasure to listen through, and I do hope there's not enough backlash against such a strain as this that it will be ignored.

Verdict: Win [8.5/10]

http://www.myspace.com/darkenhold