French solo artist Meltear strikes into your heart with his vision of catastrophic Black Metal and gives us five songs of war, vice and the betrayal of the human race via a made-up written character wandering through time and space and other mystical dimensions. Sound intriguing? I really have no idea if this is true or not, these are merely the words I have picked up from his bio-sheet and what with the Golem-esque vocals of Meltear going on and on within these tunes he could be screaming his love for all things made from either fish or cheese. It honestly wouldn’t make a difference. I mean, do any of you in this style even care what is actually being spit into the mic? Black Metal these days is worse than Grindcore in this offense. So yeah okay I know for fact how hard it is for a person to find a band he or she can believe in, let alone one close to their mailing address. I get that. I also get how many of you are just insanely sick about Black Metal that you would do anything in the world to play it and be recognized as a player of said genre. I get too how tough it is to not only learn your favorite instrument but all the instruments (albeit if the drums are digital) that you must have in order for a band or a solo artist be capable to record your work, and I applaud that aspect and the diligence and the hard work it takes to do this and also to learn proper recording techniques for your material to cut-the-mustard so to speak. Yet why is it that you must pick a style that I loathe so much? And why would you or anyone for that matter spend so much time, effort, energy and money on a style that anyone, if they wanted too, in the first year of learning an instrument I might add, could / can play and play effectively enough to get a deal through Candlelight? This I don’t get. Contact: Florian “Meltear” Decroix www.usthen.com or meltear@usthen.com