Black Metal

With their second album, “Satan Soldier of Fortune”, Departure Chandelier weave in reverse order the process of Napoleonic battlefield cleanup against self-coronation and the emperor’s ascent to deity whom profited off the fallen of both sides. While the dying are stripped naked to fertilize the countryside, boots and teeth are hurriedly taken for sale in Paris. Blood soaked coins fill the grave robber’s purse, the jangling song heard all the way to Notre Dame. Against the backdrop of the throne Illuminated by the bivouac fires, fallen men, horses and cannon wagons churn like twisted celtic knots across the sea of the battlefield as the coronation begins. Dressed in the gown of swarming Merovingian bees, a wreath of laurel arched above his skull, the Regent diamond flashes in the hilt of the Antichrist’s saber encrusted on the gold scepter – rising in his hand, yet unable to support the weight of Charlemagne’s crown. What is dark if Lucifer’s light? Compositionally wild but rich in melody, the band’s unique combination of perched guitars and impending choral keyboards beneath raw unhinged vocals spearheading lyrics of existential rebellion captures the necro sound of old French black metal. The arrangements are shorn of needless complexity, yet greater than the sum of their parts purportedly recorded on the same 4-track with the old distortions and synths used on ‘Antichrist Rise To Power’ now immortalized on their Occult Anti-quities imprint. Indeed, nearly five years in the making, Their Death Is Alive Again!