Love Lies Bleeding - Behold My Vain Sacrifice (2000)

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Love Lies Bleeding - Behold My Vain Sacrifice (2000)

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A lot of people claim its hard to find black metal that isn’t subjected to clichés or generic instrumentation, but I find this declaration to be largely unfair and untrue. There are a number of bands who use the black metal style to express their ideologies and lyrical themes by using excessive experimentation. To a degree, this French band, Love Lies Bleeding, are one of those. ‘Behold My Vain Sacrifice’ is where it all began for Love Lies Bleeding, a band who seem to have a strong enough fan base, but still not enough recognition to allow them to expand their illustrious career beyond the realms of just having a set of loyal followers. In many ways, the Metal Archives Review Challenge is essential to these bands, who remain unnoticed despite having a small band of strong supporters, because it allows the band to become exposed to a greater plain of listeners, people who may pick up on this band by sheer chance, much like I did. ‘Behold My Vain Sacrifice’ isn’t where I started with Love Lies Bleeding, but is where I will begin reviewing from, which makes sense since it’s the first full-length. With ties to bands like Corpus Christii, Hell Militia and Secrets Of The Moon, the influences upon the atmospherics are varied and thus manage to make the music interesting on this basis alone, which differs from a large amount of black metal bands.

This prominent French act have been circulating around the underground since 1996, which is just incredible. The French scene is often considered the most inspired, with bands like Alcest (formally black metal at least) and other notable bands opening up the genre and sub-genres of the French scene . Bands like this carve through the traditional elements and establish a firm sense of nationality to the local bands. French bands, in my opinion, are often considered to be, on the whole, the raw side of black metal. Love Lies Bleeding do not fit into this, or most other types of stereotype when it comes to placing them within a certain sub-genre or brand which we can use to distinguish them by. According to the genre tag, Metal Archives users consider this act to be an atmospheric black metal band with elements of doom incorporated into their themes. To me, this record isn’t as straight forward as that. Why? Because the band utilises a number of differing experimental ways to portray their lyrical themes which range from desperation, lamentations and loneliness, perhaps traditional themes. The lyrics themselves are decent, but not great. The rasps don’t really allow them to become accessible to the listener unless you read them, which is usually the case anyway. The lyrics range from English to French and express the sadness that the lyrical themes suggest they do.

“She had the darkest smile but tears in her eyes.
Delighted in sadness…Sad in happiness.
The egoistic despair she felt,
The tragic irony I saw in her soul.
Enslaved by her fate, she knew her end.”

As previously stated, the instrumentation isn’t portrayed all that traditionally. Of course, there are the occasional blast beats of double bass from the drums, the odd tremolo here or there and, obviously, rasping vocals which portray the essence of black metal and have done since the dawn of its creation. These sides to Love Lies Bleeding aren’t as accessible or approachable, but do portray a necessary output. These sides to their instrumentation are used to compliment the splendor of the supreme melodies created by the programming and keyboards. Although formulated, they serve a distinct purpose, portraying the negative aspects of the ideologies, whilst the seemingly folk-inspired side expresses different content altogether. However, Love Lies Bleeding are about a bit more than that. Each song, from ‘The Lady Who Didn't Want To Be’ with its use of expressive keyboards and female vocals, to ‘The Flowers Of Nevermore’ which use divine symphonic soundscapes which exclusively express a subtle sadness and conjure images of epic battles, or sublime landscapes, these are generated by the keyboards (which are pivotal to the French band). Elements like these lead one to believe that this band are experimental in their approach, using medieval sounding instrumentation to explore folk inspired themes. The sounds of acoustics and flutes, perhaps created by the keyboards or programming and the attractive clean female/male vocals (which lean towards the operatic) distinguish the first side of Love Lies Bleeding from the second. A significant influence from the bass would have been nice, but isn’t essential. The instrumentation is projected over a clear production and is interesting enough to merit credit.

by Perplexed_Sjel, metal-archives.com

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Love Lies Bleeding - Behold My Vain Sacrifice (2000)

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Love Lies Bleeding - Behold My Vain Sacrifice (2000)

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