French black metallers Véhémence premiere the newly rerecorded track „Chant d’Honneur“ at the Black Metal Promotion YouTube channel. The track is the second to be revealed from Assiégé pour l’Eternité, a special recasting of the band’s influential debut album, set for international release on June 10th via Antiq: Véhémence – Chant d’Honneur (Re-recording)
Quietly released digitally in February 2014, Véhémence’s Assiégé was the band’s debut album. At the time, „medieval black metal“ was largely an ephemeral idea, touched upon by a handful of second-wave records but never fully fleshed out as an ideal – an aesthetic given form and substance, a nexus of thought and deed. Musically, the French duo assimilated elder idioms of melodic black metal, both from Sweden and France, and amplified the triumph and melancholy inherent to both; a tasteful incorporation of folkiness, almost Viking in flavor but somehow sounding even older, further colored the riffing. Lyrically and visually, the album brimmed with a truly MEDIEVAL aura – imbibe both, then close your eyes, and you were transported to actually ancient times – which jointly brought the cascading songwriting to a cathartic fever pitch.
While no doubt rough around the edges, even at this early stage, Véhémence’s epic vision could be deeply felt. ATMF wisely released Assiégé physically in September of the following year, and from there, the band’s next two albums – 2019’s Par le sang versé and 2022’s Ordalies – cemented medieval black metal as a true subgenre while others sought to catch up. No amount of tribute (nor plagiarism) could dilute the timeless power of what Véhémence set in motion.
So, it only seems fitting that Véhémence return to recast their past with Assiégé pour l’Eternité. Of course, metal bands rerecording beloved albums is old hat by now. Véhémence buck that tired tradition in that Assiégé pour l’Eternité is not a mere rerecording of Assiégé, but a whole re-composition of it. The lineup of the past two albums – founding guitarist Tulzcha along with drummer Thomas Leitner and vocalist Hyvermor – is expanded by Passéisme’s KK on bass. Thus, organic drums and bass are now in the equation, with a real mix and better guitar sound helping to distinguish the riffs. Most prominently, the presence of folk instruments expands the atmosphere to its fullest, most-medieval extent. Everything becomes sharper, more electric, more dramatic, and most definitely MORE EPIC: bountiful in its sounds and sensations, Assiégé pour l’Eternité is both a metaphorical and literal bridge from the past into the present and then back again.
But most especially – and, perhaps, most importantly – the lyrics of Assiégé have been fully rewritten here, taking into account the former words but reshaped to give more sense and to make the album enter the universe of Véhémence / the world of Arencia (a magical kingdom). In the lyrics now, the magic of the world of Véhémence comes to collide with what humans know of magic (that is, not much). The main thematic arc of the lyrics deals with the concept of Celestial Chivalry, a medieval vision of knighthood (or those who were hedge knights) in which the key is to be on a quest for a better self. In this, the purity / strength of the unicorn on the cover artwork embodies the question of Celestial Chivalry, well represented by the reshaped version of the opening song, „De Célestes Cavalcades.“ In its totality, then, Assiégé pour l’Eternité achieves a similarly lofty goal whilst leaving behind the hackneyed conventions of „rerecording.“
