March 2026 - Feature Release - The North Edition

My turn for The North clan nomination this month and I am going to go with a very recent discovery of mine from the black metal gift that keeps on giving that is Canada.  Quebec-based Givre offer a niche exploration on their 2024 album Le cloître (The Cloister) as explained on their Bandcamp page:

"...Givre continues their exploration of the atoning side of pain in Christian history. This time, the lyrics are taken from the hagiographies of six saint women and explores freely their relation to god through suffering, from the symbolic poetry of Hildegard Von Bingen (1098-1179) to the disturbing and factual depictions of Marthe Robin (1902-1981). Musically, this album explores a variety of extreme genres while maintaining a suffocating and tormented atmosphere."

I have picked up a few bm gems from Canada in recent years and so it is great to find more untapped talent for my earholes.  Let us know wat you think below in the thread here or in a review.

https://metal.academy/releases/51377

I recall quite liking this record when I briefly checked it out around the time of release so I've been intending on revisiting it at some point in the future. I haven't heard any of Givre's other material though.

I don't think I have come across these guys before, but I am always up for a bit of canadian black metal, so I will endeavour to give this some ear time this month and try to jot a few words down. 

Canada continues to be a consistent source of quality black metal for my listening requirements. I keep going back, looking for more discoveries, believing on each visit that the well is surely close to running dry by now. However, upon each dip of my toes into the icy cold depths of the unfathomable lake of black metal that the country seems to have, I come away with a new discovery. This time around, Givre are the gift I have been given, and the present comes in the form of their 2024 album, Le Cloître. A forty-one-minute plus exploration of the atoning side of pain in Christian history, the tracks are the titles of six female saints, with the lyrical content being created from their hagiographies (which are all in French). Clearly a band who put a lot of research into their music, Givre are an instant source of intrigue for me. In taking such a niche subject matter for their album theme and embodying it in such an impassioned display of raging black metal, with elements of dissonant death metal as well as resonating post-metal, Le Cloître soon made the short journey from my Bandcamp wishlist and into my collection.

This is an album that somehow suggests an intimacy with the pain it explores. It is after all a record that is telling stories and thus it should carry some stimulus from the lives of these women that resonates with anyone who has experienced suffering. It is not just an album of choral chants and atmospheric keys by any means (although they do both make an appearance of course), instead there is a robustness to the messaging of this album, and as a result it comes across as a very modern sounding take of its historical content. Givre do not just relay the stories and written content, they put real emotion behind the performance. Most obvious in this is the harrowing and at times demented vocals of all three members of the band who contribute across the album. The shriller cries are the same individual I suspect, whilst the more death metal orientated vocal signatures belong to another member altogether, I would guess. David Caron-Proulx seems to be undertaking the bulk of the heavy lifting on the record with him credited with songwriting, claviers (any stringed keyboard instrument – harpsicord, clavichord etc), guitars and vocals. The research duties seem to sit with drummer and vocalist Jean-Lou David whilst bass and vocals reside with Mathieu Garon.

This contained unit digs into the depths of black metal and beyond, to the point where you can almost hear all the effort they have gone to research, record and release this record. Le Cloître feels like a very complete experience, dare I say a journey by the time you reach the end of it? It sounds mature without being boring or too arty even. It exudes an authenticity in its subject matter exploration, one that only adds to my enjoyment. Perhaps only guilty of not having any real standout moments over the record it is hard to find any other real fault with this record.

4/5