Antiq will release "Tristesse Vespérale", the debut mini-album by French duo HARDIESSE, internationally on September 30. The first track from it, "Beffroi", is streaming now through the label's YouTube channel and Bandcamp.
HARDIESSE are two people with a considerable amount of the French underground behind them. Wynter handles bass and vocals, and has played in WŸNTËR ÄRVN and WOEST as well as AORLHAC. Hyver takes guitar and vocals, with GRYLLE, VÉHÉMENCE, HANTERNOZ, HYVER, TOUR D'IVOIRE and PAYDRETZ on his record. Their stated aim for this project is virulent, powerful black metal with a medieval bent — and, fittingly for a band working in an archaic register, "hyver" is itself the old French spelling of "hiver", winter.
Six songs make up the mini-album, with Sven V. contributing rhythm guitars and drums and handling the mix.
The lyrical method is the most distinctive thing about it. Rather than narrative, the words are built from medieval vocabulary bent toward whatever the song title points at — a litany of terms rather than a story, closer to poetic meditation than to verse. The effect is deliberately raw and condensed: one word leads to the next in something like a cadavre exquis, the surrealist chain game, except assembled entirely from a medieval lexical range. Stripped of ornament that way, the writer's train of thought sits out in the open.
Musically the label places it alongside PASSÉISME, WINDIR and FORTERESSE — fierce black metal carrying an epic charge, which puts HARDIESSE squarely in the lineage that runs from Sognefjord to Québec and back into France.
Antiq have been at this since 2009, working from the position that a release is a single coherent object across sound, image, video and attitude rather than a set of separate deliverables. The label has built its reputation as much on conceptual artwork and well-made physical editions as on the music, and works with French creators wherever it can, preferring the smallest and most serious operations available.
"Tristesse Vespérale" track listing:
- Audace
- Beffroi
- Oubliette
- Remparts
- Soupirs
- Sentinelle
Hear "Beffroi": YouTube · Bandcamp
Order "Tristesse Vespérale": Antiq Bandcamp