Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
It’s been a while since this extreme of Metal sounded this good, call the genre that it subsets itself into what you will but Eyrn Non Dae and their 2012 album Meliora could almost wipe the floor with anything that pretends to be its equal. The sound is exquisitely loud, brash, fundamentally outspoken and following in the tradition the likes of Slayer, Cannibal Corpse and Birmingham’s Esoteric but with that Gallic charm that overpowers the senses whilst talking sweetly and lovingly in your ear.
For anyone this side of the English channel, it’s time for those who hang onto the illusion that the Metal bands from the U.K. still can kick all comers, perhaps with a huge nod of deference to the big four of American Thrash, backsides into the long grass, that this is no longer true. Utterly and forever the Nordic Metal scene has become one of interesting contrast, Germany and the Eastern Europeans have played the long game and still sound superb and the one bastion of hope that resided in the sometime narrow thoughts that at least the Brits could outdo the Latin Europeans now see the boundary blurred and crossed with infinite ease and surreal beauty.
No matter when you come across this band, it is hard to shake off the feeling that Mathieu Nogues, Franck Quintin, Yann Servanin, Julien Rufle and Mickael Andre all have read so much about the English and American harder edge to metal and fashioned it in their own image, taking on the past and presenting a distinct different flavour that dissects through the bull and gets down deep into the gut from the initial burst of guitar. Perhaps not since Death’s album Leprosy has a band opened in such a marked and definite way. Typical of the style there will be those that don’t get it, to the fan that’s o.k. as they don’t understand the appeal of Dance or Rap but each to their own and in songs such as Chrysalis, the outstanding Scarlet Rising and Black Obsidian Pyre the group prove that they are very much their own men, tantalisingly good and with that extreme taste of danger that gets underneath the skin.
Eyrn Non Dae is a name to roll around the tongue and get very used to because by the sounds of it they are not going away anywhere soon.
Ian D. Hall