LES MORTS VONT VITE

If the other Shub-Niggurat album was a really perky album with its twisted odd ditties, this one goes a slight bit deeper in the depression. This album makes Univers Zero's world like Univers Billions $ as this is really BLEAK and gloomy and send gothic rock groups back to their cribs. The album takes its name after the 1839 Horace Vernet painting gracing its sleeve.

I have, because of my RIO tastes, heard many sombre album, but like this one, I must say that it might be among the top five along with Present's first two and UZ's Heresie, while not delivering as much energy as those. This album with its gloomy soprano vocals close to classical music and rather complex structures also does hint clearly at some Zeuhl influences, but we are clearly on the outer fringes of rock music more like Avant Rock. However impressive this album maybe, one of the main gripes I have with it, is its repetitive nature with the same endlessly slow patterns and booming bass thumping allowing of course for plenty of doomy guitar wails and gloomy organs, but this comes back on almost every track. But Shub-Niggurat is not just content on slow macabre paces, as when La Ballade De Lénore picks up speed they get down to even more ignominious moods, prompting even Dracula to take the night off!!! (Yes, THAT bad!!!!!!! ;-)

If one day your kid-cousin is turning towards goth rock, and you would like to get him interested in a proggier current than his actual tastes, you might want to introduce him to prog rock through a band like this!!! No doubt he will be impressed and maybe . just maybe ... also interested enough to borrow the album to his buddies and who knows what could happen? Worth a shot, aint'it?