We are from yesterday. — In the case of Commentry, France-based melodic black metal act Sühnopfer the titre of their fourth full-length album says loud and plain-as-day all that you need to know heading into its ambitiously carved depths. ‘Nous Sommes d’Hier‘ looks farther in the past than most would, pulling hymnal vocal melodies from seventeenth century composers and translating them into the main driver for quadruple-sped guitar driven melodic black metal pieces in their own long-honed, eruptive style. Still an unhinged beastdom in gentleman’s clothing this is by far the most sophisticated effort from the project to date, one which cannot help but overflow with ideas and to the point that the experience must ultimately overcome the frothy excess it creates in motion.

Sühnopfer formed circa 2001 as the first bit of black metal musician Ardraos put to tape back in the early 2000’s, it being of the melodic black spectrum whereas the shorter-lived Veratyr project came a couple of years later and in a different style. A proficient drummer even on the rawest of earlier demo tapes (‘Shades of Thy Beauty‘, 2003) the artist was best known for drumming in Christicide first and then more recently Peste Noire yet we find all of the ancient romanticism without the political edge in this band. The style of his earlier official work from the ‘Laments‘ demo in 2004 (which I wrote about back in 2018) was arguably more inspired by the pagan black metal of Belenos, and could’ve been considered a loose contemporary to Artefact at the time. This will make more sense once you’ve hit the realization of that style within their ‘L’aube des trépassés‘ (2007) mLP despite it being a far more raw unhinged result. These formative years offer some light illumination of where the artist had developed their own voice and skills, the 2004 demo being the most substantial revelation, but this was l’entraînement, the notions which work eventually revealed.

For a certain type of black metal fan Sühnopfer‘s debut LP (‘Nos Sombre Chapelles‘, 2010) offers an incredible ideal in a very traditional style, works which we could cut down to a specific niche of Swedish melodic black metal achieved primarily within the standards set by Sacramentum‘s ‘Far Away From the Sun‘ but perhaps just as brutal as any one mid-90’s Abigor record per Ardraos wrathful drumming and still very over the top vocal style which helps to mask the somewhat blandly aped Emperor riffs which color the darker turns of a few key songs. At the time their only real contemporaries within arms reach were labelmates Aorlhac and one of my longtime favorites Darkenhöld though we could say Ardraos‘ style was comparably severe, percussive and still feels appropriately over-the-top for a debut LP. The howling vocal style found on his second LP (‘Offertoire‘, 2014) wasn’t the only point of amplification achieved on said step-up but Sühnopfer had become a monstrous entity with less room for the beauteous stride than before, a more accomplished release and a proper follow-up to the debut nonetheless. Fans of 90’s black metal can safely stop there, fixate on the nuance of those records for months to come as I’d personally felt their ‘breakthrough’ third album ‘Hic Regnant Borbonii Manes‘ (2019) was at times cartoonish in the way a lot of Scandinavian black metal can be, a nitro-blasted engine roaring like a small chainsaw, but it was otherwise the seeming impossible step-up beyond the last that’d cemented this band as a truly extreme force pairing brutality and beauteous throngs of melodic guitar wiles in a way we’ve only seen from newer groups like Passéisme since.

A loosely lumped together movement spanning a hundred-fifty years defined by methodology which broadly applies to all popular music today, we cannot so naturally suffuse the generalization of Baroque music and lump it upon the hyper-slugged scaling of melodic black metal with a few caveats but, eh at least the misuse of the term medieval won’t have to apply here. We do however find a clear period-specific inspiration for Ardraos‘ work in construction of ‘Nous Sommes d’Hier‘ which begins with “D.S.F.R.” a rousing guitar slung interpretation of the melody from “Domine salvum fac regem, H. 291” per Marc-Antione Charpentier given to Sühnopfer‘s blast-paced movement and wilding vocal. The use of choral themes which have been adapted into complex, blazingly performed guitar melodies seems to span most of the album though I am far from an expert on the works/composers suggested it does seem like some pre-Romantic/Classical composers are included. There is precedence for this sort of thing so pulling this off isn’t a matter of unknowns but avoiding the chaos of the artist’s brutal percussive style muddling everything is the perceived challenge. Pulling back so that due space is given to these extended arcs of melody makes for a different release, one which feels alien next to their 2019 release in terms of pacing and performance; These are not only ~8-10 pieces on average but decidedly verbose and repetitive pieces which demand each statement must escalate per their hymnal skeleton, setting a bigger scene than the usual black metal structure can handle. “Sermon sur le Trépassement”, which features a guest spot from Vindsval of Blut Aus Nord, does the best job of breaking this effect up in steps and stages as to avoid a religious point of inspiration or a cloying bit of rapture, returning us to a more familiar Scandinavian introspective quality within a few refrains.

The peak point of (I’d say) originality available to Sühnopfer‘s elaborate modus is arguably “Pays d’Allen” and though this is the type of song he’d been writing even as far back as the first LP this is an important piece which bridges the two uneven portions of the album. Beyond the indulgence of its opening bluster the song finds its own plane of existence before it ends, never quite finishing the thought which feels like it leaves the album to hang open for a moment before pressing on to the last few pieces. This’ll make more sense in the midst of repeat listens as this moment seems to purposefully avoid a finale moment so that Side C of this triple-sided double LP can justify itself. The bulk of the finer work done on ‘Nous Sommes d’Hier‘ is found on the first four songs with “Derniers Sacrements” a bit of an almost-there second alternate in terms of length and profundity but the rest of the final third doesn’t have a clear function in extending the album to an hour -and- escaping the impact of truly grand double-length album. As a fan of fluidly whipping melodic black metal albums above most things I’d found this a bit long, somewhat scatterbrained and overstated in terms of Side C, but I’d never scoffed at any one particular piece. The cover of Michel Polnareff‘s sonorous “Le Bal des Laze” to close the album is brilliant, however, and despite the lack of funereal organ it communicates the clever narration of this song of a doomed man in a strange but effective way using both clean and rasped vocals.

What we trade for the undying flood of brutally beaten melodicism in the past yields a more unique result for Sühnopfer, a reverently stated fourth album which does well to realize its ambitions to the point that it might’ve overflowed beyond a reasonable commercial release in some respects. Even if we can still gladly lump Ardraos‘ style and work within range of other melodic black metal bands with similar ideals in mind ‘Nous Sommes d’Hier‘ is inarguably a captivating work set apart, still an over-the-top presence worth taking a closer ear to if you’ve the focus and patience. A high recommendation.

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