HELL MILITIA

As we've discussed in past reviews, the French have a way of twisting and crumpling conventional modes of black metal into something that is often more poisonous and almost always a tad askew. But once in a while along comes a French black metal album that remains firmly attached to traditional genre forms and shapes, opting for standard minor note harmonies, blast beats, and some measure of black 'n roll groove. HELL MILITIA's "Last Station on the Road to Death" is not one of those albums. In fact, I can't recall the last time I reviewed a French BM album that wasn't at least a hair or two off balance, so you can flush the once-in-a-while comment down the crapper as well.

The deal is that HELL MILITIA boasts in its ranks members from such revered acts as MERRIMACK, ARKHON INFAUSTUS, TEMPLE OF BAAL and may others. In fact, bassist and destroyer of the letter "C" Hellsukkubus alone includes on his resume ANTAEUS, CORPUS CHRISTII, MERRIMACK, and SECRETS OF THE MOON, to name just a handful. On "Last Station on the Road to Death", HELL MILITIA sounds like none of those acts, aside from the occasional morsel and tidbit.

The opening track, "All the Same", is just over one minute of a seemingly studious chap discussing the addict's continual yearning for another fix, which segues well to 47 minutes of music that somehow parallels in a sonic sense the sordid misadventures told in "Naked Lunch". Fucked up and gratingly dissonant, the tunes incorporate semi-traditional blasting black metal with obnoxiously bizarre and ugly vocal lines that often cross during what might otherwise be termed choruses, as string bent, scathing riffs create a sort of slow-motion homicide. And it gets "worse" during the album's second half, beginning with an unsettling cover of GG ALLIN's "Shoot Knife Strangle Beat & Crucify" — an apt cover choice if there ever was one – with its radiating waves of pain set to slow, foot dragging cadences interrupted, or perhaps disrupted, for point-of-emphasis snare bursts. "The Pig that Became God" takes the cake in that regard and the pie as well, owing to those slurring punk-ish vocals.

That all probably seems all well, good, and otherwise for those with a taste for the disorienting side of black metal (a.k.a. French black metal) and for the most part it is indeed. It's just too much at times and tends to drag in spots, mainly during those periods where an idea seems more regurgitated with greener shades of puke than reinvented with previously unknown strains of infection. It'll still do the trick for the diehards, even if it wears a little thin for the rest of us.