Rex Mundi - IHVH
"J'imaginer (Be-reshit)" starts and ends with weird chanting and then the guitar starts in, there is then something sort of prayer-sounding spoken over it in French. It feels kind of like an intro to the CD to set the mood. I'm not sure how I feel about it, but it did get my attention and set it apart from anything else I've listened to recently.
"Naphtali" is on that I like better, the guitar part is interesting and I thought the vocals on here worked better; the same goes for "Patrimoine Genetique," which has some interesting variation in the guitars and drums. The chanting returns on "Pious Angels (Sefer Seraphim)" which gives way to growling over the guitar part, which I liked a lot, but again, I'm not sure how I feel about the chanting. This has a semi-long midsection which is some choir-sounding singing and chanting, which I thought worked well in this song, and then it switches back after the 7-minute mark with some layered vocals.
The CD ends with "I have imagined," which is a slow, pretty piano outro sort of track and works well as a closer. The whole thing flows pretty well as a whole. I'm not crazy about the spoken parts but mostly the vocals are pretty good and the guitar parts carry along the songs well. Lyrically it's pretty interesting also, Biblical references and bits of things in French and Latin, among other languages. I think "Patrimoine Genetique" is probably the best song on here, but as an entire album it has a nice atmosphere from the combination of the sound, the samples, the packaging, and the subject matter.
