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| The cover art is very nice, vikings, drakars, tits! It has everything except Satan. |
The Baguette Doom Series pt. VII: Thorgal
This album is kind of an
alien in the French metal scene. During the 1980s, it was mostly
about heavy or power metal for the Frenchmen with bands like Vulcain
or Sortilège. While Shelder definitely has a classic metal vibe, it also has clear doom metal influences. Only 1000 copies were pressed of the
album, it's definitely one of the reasons it has attained this
semi-cult status but yeah, don't be fooled it's not a classic that
deserves your full attention if you're not a true aficionado of their
genre.
Even if it's 1988, the
production is simply freaking awful. Self produced by the band, it
demonstrates the limits of the ''do it yourself'' approach. Before
recently, you had to pay an awful lot of money to get the album, I
never did since paying absurd prices for music is not really
something I can or want to do! All I have is this vinyl rip but I
believe it's a quality one as I read these same criticisms on some
other websites. It sounds like it was recorded 20 years earlier,
basically. I really don't understand why the tone of the guitars is
so bad, the drums are pretty pathetic too, Def Leppard's
drummer would be better even if he loses an arm, he'll have to drum
with his mouth. I mean, Shelder's drums is basically three boxes of
wine and a baguette. Cult! Sadly, it's not your usual dad's cellar
black metal bands.
The album would had been
way more enjoyable with a better sound and while Daniel Hacquebey is
not a bad guitarist (he's even a pretty good soloist), it's kind of
weird that the album is dedicated to Randy Rhoads, he's not in the
same league or even the same genre as the late guitarist. The lyrics
of the song ''Star Mythique'' are about him and they're utterly
terrible, it's in French so I guess if you can't understand it, you
can call yourself lucky. Trust me there's better reasons to learn the
language (High Power and ADX are good examples)
The riffs are mostly
decent, albeit as previously mentioned not heavy enough. The album is
only thirty minutes which is probably a good thing since it would had
probably been more boring that it already is. Their music kind of
sounds like an untrained proto Pagan Altar worship band. There's
still plenty of good moments like the catchy chorus of “Shelder”,
the 6 minutes ballad near the end of the album or the title track
with its rockish vibe and its cool solo. But it's like eating yogurt
covered sausages since the production is so abysmal.
While
I can't trash the production of “God of Vikings” enough, there's
a certain charm to be found here. Especially in the vocals of
Corinne
Hacquebey. Although the production isn't good on them either, it's
still better than the soft and weak guitars. Her vocals are pretty
enjoyable in my opinion, albeit a bit
amateurish just like the rest of the album. They're high, nasally,
poppy and I think they inadvertently
created this airy atmosphere and I found it pretty interesting. The
lyrics are a mix between French and English, they're pretty mediocre
most of the time especially in mundane songs like “Rock'n'Roll
star”. But I'll admit that it's always appealing to hear some metal
in French, perhaps I'm biased! The vocals of Shelder saved the album
for me, maybe because of their novelty but it was still fun to listen
to.
As
a debut (and last) album, their influences can be a bit obvious at
times. Mostly Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and perhaps Manilla Road (I
suspect the last track is named after them) but that's forgivable. I
always imagine the possible future of a short lived band, it's
somewhat amusing to guess what they could had done. In Shelder's
case, a good producer (well, even a lame one who knew how to mix
a guitar) would had been a blessing. Unfortunately, this album is not
a jewel although it's worth a look. Don't pay 200 bucks for it,
dudes. They probably paid less than that to produce it. Remaster that
stuff and perhaps we'll talk.
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