LES FLEURS DU MAL

Therion get their Serge Gainsbourg on with this collection of generic metal-flavoured covers of classic French pop songs. It's an interesting experiment in exploring what metal can learn from this unexpected quarter, but all it makes me want to do is go listen to the originals rather than sit through these Therion-by-numbers adaptations of old material. I can sit through one or two of these at the time, but the schtick begins to wear thin after five minutes or so and perhaps Therion would have been better simply taking this style of songwriting and adding motifs reminiscent of the genre to original compositions of their own rather than adhering to the original tunes as strictly as they do here.