Review by Ben for Véhémence - Ordalies (2022)

How do you assess an album that consistently breaks up otherwise excellent medieval flavoured melodic black metal with jolly sing-alongs and atmosphere-breaking folk melodies. This is the question I've been faced with after giving French band Véhémence's third full length album plenty of time to impress me. I genuinely dig the hugely majestic black metal that fills most of the release's hour long runtime. There are heaps of fantastic riffs on offer, and the musicianship is totally on point throughout. If the band gave me a whole album of more pure black metal, with riffs like those found in great tracks like Notre royaume... en cendres and Par le glaive, this would easily get 4 stars, threatening 4.5. As it is though, there are just too many of those awkward folkish change-ups that sound more like pirate shanties or dance-around-the-maypole jaunts than anything I want in my black metal.

These criticisms obvious come down to personal taste though, and I'll say straight out that this is a high quality release. If you're reading this and you like both majestic black metal and Ensiferum-style folk metal, then this could be your album of the year. As for me, well I'll still give this a listen from time to time, as it's a relatively small portion of the runtime that provokes my ire. There is still plenty of goodness here for this cranky old black metal fanatic.