“This is Halloween, this is Halloween, Pumpkins scream in the dead of night”... You know the tune. Le Bal & la Bête was supposed to introduce us to Bal Chavaux, a new venue in Montreuil on the site of the former Le Méliès cinema. In the end, Bal Chavaux wasn't ready in time, so we're meeting a few meters away, at La Marbrerie, for a great evening organized by Sanit Mils, the Metal Social Club, and HornsUp. Marble is fine, it's what graves are made of, so we'll take it. With its different spaces, La Marbrerie is well suited to the event, becoming almost a living space (orliving-dead ?) with its restaurant area, its tattoo stand... it's cozy, we meet a few costumed ghouls (special mention for an impressive gorgon), we feel good here.
The program is eclectic and packed, with no real headliner since each band is entitled to roughly the same length set. As the audience begins to enter La Marbrerie, we are already getting ready to witness the most special concert of the evening.
LIGHT OF THE MORNING STAR
What makes this concert so special is its rarity. Light of the Morning Star cultivates a certain mystery. Their only appearance in France dates back to 2018... But that's not all: tonight is also only the second time the band has performed on stage since 2018, period. Seeing them appear on this very special weekend, when the veil between the world of the living and the world of the dead is at its thinnest, should come as no surprise... Thus, the wonderful tracks from the album Charnel Noir, released in 2021, or the EP Wings in the Night Sky from 2024, have never really had the opportunity to haunt their audience “in real life.” Yet it is with the spectral notes of Nocta, a track from the first album, that the ritual begins, heavy and captivating from the outset.
O-A, the anonymous mastermind behind the project, chants in the darkness. Dark glasses and smoke are de rigueur: Light of the Morning Star has earned its “gothic” label, evoking memories of Mario Bava, Nosferatu, Peter Cushing and Vincent Price. With its somber gravity and theatricality, their music exudes something occult and solemn. Images of processions, hooded figures carrying a corpse are projected on the wall behind them... It's mystical, macabre, and fascinating. Each track exudes the exhilarating scent of a winter night but also conceals the mysteries hidden beneath the lid of a tomb.
The lid creaks open, sending shivers down our spines. Lid of Casket commands respect. O-A laments in his sepulchral voice. “Caskets, caskets, spirits ride through their lids”: tonight, no tomb will be able to hold back the specters. The atmosphere is chilling, Burial Chamber Cold hypnotizes us, Coffinwood's guitars screech like a gothic rock funeral march... In the dark, we revel as the band pays tribute to its discography, from its first EP with Black Throne Ascension to its most recent tracks. Everything is imposing, majestic, irresistibly dark and opaque. The songs are separated by sound feedbacks, and the audience, which is beginning to gather, doesn't quite know when to applaud, as if at a real wake. This necromantic ritual ends with Charnel Noir, but the spell continues to work. Even if rarity gave value to this rare occurence, we hope to see Light of the Morning Star again soon. In the meantime, we will continue to savor this dark secret in the shadows of our vault.
GRAVEKVLT
As you can see from the audience's enthusiasm, Gravekvlt is already a cult band, and the change in atmosphere is radical. The intro to Ozzy Osbourne's Mr Crowley blares out as the band takes to the stage. This time, the dark glasses aren't for gothic style, they're for showing off while embracing an old-fashioned rock'n'roll vibe. Gravekvlt is best listened to while wearing tight blue jeans.
Right away, the rhythms are different. Their mix of punk/black/speed metal is very fast. As with Light of the Morning Star before, horror film fans will revel in the imagery, although after the gothic atmosphere of the previous band, the mood here is more like a bloody B movie. Gravekvlt attacks, bites, roars. It's aggressive and festive at the same time... Yet it's when their frenzy calms down a little that we prefer them. The gloomy interlude of Frozen Grave, with its macabre evocations that fit so well with the evening, and the joyful, almost Batcave-esque dissonant influences of Last Skeleton's Dance offer welcome variations while thickening the atmosphere.
Nevertheless, for moshing like brainless zombies among the graves, Goat'n'Roll's riffs and the groove of Fangs of the Night, with its clear vocals, work like a charm. It brings to mind Mötörhead, Tribulation, Midnight, and Venom. It's funny, epic, sinister and fun all at once: a 70s/80s vision of esoteric horror, a way to play at being rock stars, and turn the graveyard in a raveyard, as colourful as it is endearing. Fun at funerals, basically.
SANG FROID
Enough with the graveyards, vampires, and stuff like that. It's time for synths, time for metalheads to clap their hands and sway to some cold wave. Sang Froid begins in darkness, with Satie's Gnossienne playing in the background. As usual, the look is understated and elegant. No dark glasses for them. Then Proudly Ruining Yourself kicks in, with its catchy rhythm, TC's sepulchral vocals, and JJS's guitar adding extra heaviness... It's cold, catchy, unstoppable.
While Sang Froid oozes blatant nostalgia, influenced by the Sisters of Mercy and Depeche Mode, we still love hearing the more modern touches with Ben Notox's mystical and futuristic synths, as well as a taste for heaviness probably inherited from the more metal background of the two members of Regarde les Hommes Tomber (the epic and heavy intro to Grace & Doom). It's also fun to recognise TC's stage mannerisms... cold wave or black metal, it doesn't matter, his microphone stand remains his best friend, which he shakes and brandishes throughout the set. The darkness is pierced by red and blue spotlights, "sang" and "froid", probably! Negative temperatures in the veins, perhaps, but foreheads are beaded with sweat in front of the stage.
The simple melodies stick in your head. A drum machine straight out of the Cold War (very, very cold) imposes its beat on the irresistible Silence the Night and its discipline on The Eleventh Dawn, a track carried by hypnotic electronic loops and vocals from beyond the grave. The intensity reaches its peak with Ô Caniveau, whose demonstrative theatrical grandiloquence and sublimated despair take Sang Froid away from its realistic urban aesthetic for a moment, reminding us of the more fantastical and mystical nightmares that Light of the Morning Star brought to life earlier. A cold wave eulogy with overwhelming melancholy that plunges La Marbrerie into respectful silence, it was one of the highlights of the evening. ‘Je crèverai seul, voilà tout’ ('I'll die alone and that's it'): don't worry, if it makes you feel any better, we'll all die alone. It's heartwarming to know that we're all together in our loneliness, isn't it?
FINAL DOSE
The clock is ticking, the concerts are coming thick and fast. London band Final Dose are tasked with keeping the ghouls in front of the stage awake. They've spruced up their look a bit: one guy is wearing a cape and another has an executioner's hood!
They're a bit like punks who play black metal, so they wear capes, but not too many, because they also have to look like they don't give a damn. Final Dose isn't here to show off, but to blow our brains out in spin-dryer mode, all under unflinching red spotlights that won't budge an inch during the set. Final Dose thrashes at full speed and combines the coldness of Scandinavian forests (the howls at the moon of Eternal Winter, listen to them, the children of the night! What music they make!) with explosive energy. Let's also salute the drummer, possessed, whose demolition work is impressive.
Yeah, but you know, it's past 11 p.m., we're not twenty anymore, and getting beaten up by muscular executioners might have been better a little earlier. Now, we're having a hard time keeping up with the pace throughout, and we're taking advantage of the rare, more atmospheric lulls (the intro to Rite of Spring) to catch our breath. Final Dose doesn't do frills or nuances and shows us no mercy... so that's what the executioner's hood was for!
REJECTS
We couldn't possibly end a Halloween party without mentioning the Misfits at some point. Rejects is a cover band so let's get started with half an hour of covers from Glenn Danzig, Doyle, Jerry Only and all the others who have been part of the band over the course of its five-decade history. Half an hour is enough time to play a bunch of songs and get the party started.
We are pleasantly surprised by the singer's voice, which faithfully emulates Danzig's wolf cries. The setlist has the audience jumping around like drunken ghouls to Night of the Living Dead, I Turned into a Martian, Last Caress and Scream!. At the very end of the set, Rejects obviously serves up their rendition of Halloween (we recommend Hexvessel's slow and haunting version!). We couldn't have a Halloween party without the song Halloween, could we? It was fun and unifying, something to party and laugh about among ghouls, werewolves, punks, metalheads, and other strange creatures.
This nice touch allows concerts to end on a lighter, more electric note. La Marbrerie celebrated Halloween in style, in many different ways. Gothic metal, black metal, cold wave, goths, punks... We laughed, we summoned dark creatures from the shadows, we felt sad. We hope that this mini-festival, whose editorial line was dictated more by the date than by a specific musical genre, will have a sequel... After all, monsters are never truly defeated and tend to come back for revenge in a series of sequels, so who knows, maybe next year?
