Here's a black metal band who know how to draw on their origins to offer a world that's different from the clichés of the genre: galibots were those young, puny children sent to work in the mines of northern France for derisory wages. Galibot are rooted in the land, and while Hell is usually found underground, theirs is indeed subterranean, but less mythological: the mining industry provides the backdrop for their first EP, Euch'mau Noir.
Far from being just a conceptual coquetry, this universe can be felt right from the introduction, Les Galibots: menacing strings, pickaxe sound design... The atmosphere is tangible, claustrophobic and lends a cinematic touch that is both tragic and oppressive. When Galibot unleash their fury, it's snarling, fiery black metal (it's not impossible to see similarities with Houle's Adèle Adsa in Agathe's raw, flayed vocals), a black coal storm from the gut. Cheval de Fosse and Courrières crush us with their merciless rhythms, evocative of this industrial world where humans are reduced to pieces by machines, to the point of alienation (Les Nords, oozing hypnotic dementia). And yet, although there is no light in these hellish bowels, we can detect a hint of melancholy in a breath or a vocal line. The spectral wailing at the end of Barbara and the quote of Pierre Bachelet's Les Corons in Terre d'Euch'mau evoke emotions that are as surprising as they are poignant. Galibot denounce an inhuman world, recall the memory of Zola, but also reappropriate the history of this land, stained with blood made invisible by the blackness of coal.
Incisive, furious, conquering: Galibot's black metal lacks neither bite nor groove. But beyond that backbone, it's the soul that really gets to you, the strong roots that are felt at every turn, in the lyrics, the production, the overall texture, the buried despair. This first EP is as dark and massive as the most intimidating slag heap. And what is Euch'mau noir in all this? Well, it's the Black Devil in Ch'ti, the dialect of northern France. And the hells unleashed here are far more terrifying than the grandiloquent fables of the various religions.
