Review by Maciek on September 27, 2020.

It seems that over the last few years more and more French metal bands are getting my attention, don't know whether I was not aware of the metal scene there or if it has grown that much recently. Either way I am very glad I heard this album and it is amongst my favourite albums of all time now.

The band seems to be a one-man project with M-Kha doing most of the composing and playing all instruments with support of Alix R. playing bass and writing some lyrics and Laurent C. playing rhythm guitars and doing choirs, both are also listed as the band's live line-up.

Their style has been described as atmospheric black metal and that seems to be the perfect description. It's definitely got black metal as the main ingredient, but with some doomy elements, with haunting melody lines being played throughout most of the tracks in the background. And probably those melody lines are the part that grabbed me the most - once they entered my head through my ears, they decided to stay there for good. I remember listening to Deliverance's "Holocaust 26:1-46" album (another good French production) and thinking about "Sancte Iohannes" track that it would be cool to have a whole album where you could find that kind of atmosphere and Aodon has perfectly answered my wish. And in every single track. To find some other comparisons I would describe it as a darker, less catchy version of Kampfar ('L'oeuvre' track, for example), but with an even bigger ability to provide you with plenty of earworms which in my case are just impossible to get rid of.

The rhythm section is very good, there are plenty of proper black metal fast tempos, but there's a lot of variety to it, especially during those haunting passages, which got stuck in my head. The vocals are black metal shrieks with that "howling" style that reminded me of Deliverance mentioned before. All lyrics are in French, so to get the full experience I had to use Google Translate, but I think that the vocals are clear enough for someone who knows the language to get it without the need to read the lyrics. Which are very dark, depressive and a perfect match with the cover art. The guitars are perfectly balanced, the sound production is generally very good, you can clearly hear all instruments and the vocalist, which is also a big advantage. It's very difficult for me to pick a favourite track, because in my opinion all are perfect from the beginning to the end. It keeps me hooked on every sound, no matter if it's fast black metal parts or clean guitar fills.

Grab a bite of this piece of metal and see if it's for you, too. And share with your friends, family, neighbours and enemies. Because good music should be shared.

Rating 10 out of 10