Christian Mistress – To Your Death (2015) / 95%

Subtle Heavy Metal Escapism

Traditional heavy metal is not the simplest music style to play. Far from it, in fact. It takes a lot of heart to create some everlasting and outstanding music in a style that has been one of the basis of the whole metal genre for over forty years. As a benchmark example, Iron Maiden’s self titled debut just turned forty years old this week and it still shines bright due to its timeless quality. Furthermore, I do think that it takes a lot of knowledge to craft something worthwhile in that ageless genre too. A quasi encyclopedic knowledge of all the twists and turns of heavy metal is often required to be able to distinguish itself from the hungry pack. The best heavy metal bands are sometimes savants wearing arcane tomes on their patched vests but their influences don’t just remain on their sleeves. They’re being fully digested till they’re excreted into far from feckless matter.

America has a few of those bands capable to be pack leaders but in my eyes, the best ones are the tranquil types. They’re people who could care less about notoriety, personal fame and the likes. Bands such as Magic Circle, Demon Bitch and yes, Christian Mistress. To me, the West Coast band is one of the most important modern American heavy metal bands. Now on hold, three-fifths of the band is now involved in the excellent and oddly named Quayde LaHüe. Except for the fact that both bands are lead by powerful women and both play heavy metal, they’re pretty dissimilar in both their approach and established sonority. Quayde LaHüe are more into pure hard rock and are a bit more conventional. On the other hand, Christian Mistress are one of the few idiosyncratic bands playing a traditional take on metal. They have enough peculiarities and personalized details to stand their own against anyone. On their hopefully temporary swansong, the quintet was truly let loose.

Surely, you can immediately hear a few bands such as the best of the best from NWOBHM such as Angel Witch, the aforementioned Maiden or Judas Priest but there’s a lot of pure Americana in their sound. Their songs are about the great outdoors, the vast roads of North America, liberty or freedom that comes with emancipation or even death and those are themes easily associated with the United States. Heavy metal is rarely a subtle affair, it usually demands high energy and robust and daring instrumentation and while it’s certainly the case here. It’s permanently gutsy but there’s an irrevocable distinctive charm with Christian Mistress, there’s some hidden mysteries in their music and it takes several spins to uncover them. There’s more than meets the eye with them. It reminds me of, I don’t know, Bruce Springsteen hanging out with ZZ Top and Joan Jett who suddenly discovered Slough Feg and Diamond Head. There’s a lot of spirit and a puzzling but captivating blend of influences in their music.

The vocals of lead vocalist Christine Davis are phenomenal to me, she sounds honest but unhinged and there’s a warmth power to her blunt clean method. She sounds pissed off but at the same time, she invites you to follow her in her misanthropic call for freedom. Davis sounds like an enchantress in “Lone Wild”, there’s uncompromising power in her performance. She’ll bewitch you, for damn sure. Alongside Annick Giroux (Cauchemar), Elizabeth Davis (Castle), Mandy Martillo (Satan’s Hallow, Midnight Dice) or Stacey Peak (Savage Master), she embodies the power of women in today’s heavy metal and does it with grace and valor.

The guitars of Tim Diedrich and Oscar Sparbel (not a German band by the way) are tight and recalls the mightiness of the Murray/Smith seminal duo. A traditional metal band is only as good as its riffs and leads and there’s plenty of great ones to find here. The second track “Stronger Than Blood” has plenty to like. I prefer my heavy metal to be rather slow and chunky and that’s what Christian Mistress mostly plays. They’re also pretty damn excellent at being faster and to the point on tracks such as “Open Road” of the bonus and title track “TYD”. I like when riffs have the time to breathe and let the vocals come out beautifully. There’s a great cohesion in their songwriting and the compromises between everyone involved is apparent. The drums of Reuben Storey are bread and butter and the bass of Johnny Wulf is high enough in the mix to be one of the highlights at time (wonderful in the epic “Ultimate Freedom”)

They’re not the sort of band that will astonish you with their musicianship for the sake of it. I mean, they definitely have skills and that’s undeniable but they’re songwriters through and through. Their heavy metal is deliberately blurring the line between distinguished and raw. it’s smart, unique and has a lot of complexity hidden under layers of simplicity. They're mature musicians and most of their songs are compact five to six minutes compositions and they offer a wide variety of moods from escapism to exquisite ass kicking.

To Your Death, just like their previous two albums, explores humanity through its emotions with talent and conviction. Christian Mistress belongs to no scenes, they never surfed on trends. They’re the leaders of their own wolf pack and I hope that they’ll be back. This band and this album defines what I like in modern heavy metal. A focus on raw songwriting with strong influences but also an original re-reading of the past with a timeless attitude.



Christian Mistress on Bandcamp

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In this pandemic period of our lives where we stay at home and all the gigs are either cancelled or reported, I had a burst of nostalgia for when I saw Christian Mistress play the third edition of the extremely good Wings of Metal festival (rest in peace) here in Montréal.

Christian Mistress wasn’t originally on the lineup but when Evil Spirit from Germany cancelled their appearance, they were booked to replace them. I remember being really excited when Annick Giroux, the curator of the fest, told me the news. This seems like it was yesterday. Seeing metal gigs at the now permanently closed Katacombes. Life is ever-changing.