The Skaden (The Shield) was originally formed under the banner of Eikenskaden (Oaken Shield) back in 1998 in Metz, Lorraine, France by multi-instrumentalist Stefan Kozak. During Eikenskaden’s ten year run Stefan released four albums, but last year he decided to change the band’s name to The Skaden and continue onwards in a different manner.
As far as memory serves me the last Eikenskaden album I heard, ‘There is No Light at the End of the Tunnel’ was a somewhat straight forward black metal release with a raw guitar tone, vicious screams and a slightly progressive touch to it. On ‘You Will Hope I Had Died’ Stefan is much more inclined to experiment and take his music (performed entirely by himself BTW) in a more avant-garde direction that’s possibly influenced by other notable French bands like Alcest and Peste Noire.
Within we find the typical black metal tremolo picked guitars with a raw tone to them, but there is plenty of melody from the lead guitar with interesting riffs/solos and you’ll also quickly discover some shoe gaze, post rock and progressive touches to this music too. There’s also some not so classic black metal instrumentation like violins and woodwind instruments, which honestly make the music sound a bit wild, weird and slightly fruity at times, but somehow it works out. There are also five unknown souls (unknown to me at least) who contribute lyrics and backing vocals and where it truly shines is on the last song, ‘貴様らは俺の死を望む’ simply because it has spoken vocals in Japanese alongside some rather grim music.
All in all this is a fairly strong and avant-garde album that probably won’t be a big hit for black metal purists, but for those that desire something a little different then this is certainly worth investigating further.
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