BAND FEATURESBLACK METALFEATURESSeth: Vive la Révolution
August 24, 2024Jack Press“Whenever I start writing a new album, I keep thinking that hopefully this one should be a little easier in the way that I don’t want it to be painful, but it turns out that every album that I write is actually painful,” states Heimoth, founding member and guitarist of black metal institution SETH, only weeks removed from the release of their seventh album,
La France des Maudits. “The more I think about it, the more it turns out to be something you can’t escape. It’s not sheer happiness, but there is happiness from time to time, and those times, though very short, are intense and big enough to carry on.”
If producing albums is painful for Heimoth, the evidence is clearly left on the cutting room floor. Considering it took SETH 17 years to release two albums, they’ve dropped arguably the finest albums of their career to date with just three years between them. La France des Maudits and 2021’s
La Morsure du Christ build a burning monument to 90s black metal, using the 2019 Notre-Dame fire and the 235th anniversary of the start of the French Revolution as their inspiration.
“The title is the union of two concepts,” explains vocalist Saint Vincent, a key figure in SETH’s own musical revolution since joining in 2016, choosing to write all their lyrics in French alexandrine, a syllabic poetic metre. “The French concept was us wanting to put in front that we are French black metal, the point was not being patriotic or anything, just that in the black metal scene, we are different from the Scandinavian scene.”
“Secondly, des Maudits, or the cursed, represents in a way the republic of black metal, but has a more universal meaning, like all the people that have been rejected, or cursed, by the main power or the main order from God, or all the people who have been rejected by the morals or religion in place: they are all cursed.”
Having chosen to forego New Music Friday traditions to release La France des Maudits on Bastille Day, and with political unrest deep-seated in the hearts and minds of French nationals right now, you’d be forgiven for assuming the album was a politically-charged patriotic stand. Only, it’s not. Unless of course, you view it as a symbol of their patriotism for black metal.
“I think the black metal scene, even if you can find some really great and really successful people, there is always cursed people,” reflects Saint Vincent, “they’re away from the mainstream, so they’re rejecting the main essence of the people, the ministers of society, and so in a way it’s a celebration of all the people that have been rejected by God and are gathering in the darkness.”
The French Revolution, then, is merely a setting for a celebration of Scandinavian, second wave black metal. Influences and Easter eggs are wide-ranging, from referencing French poet Charles Baudelaire’s The Flowers Of Evil to occultist Aleister Crowley’s. However, it all comes back to the seeds of their scene.
“There is such a black metal thing in the French Revolution. You have the former king that is not the son, but the Heir of God, and all the people are finally getting angry, and aggressive, and violent and get him and cut his head off and it’s so brutal,” laughs Saint Vincent, revelling in his country’s history. “There is something really brutal that is connected with metal imagery, just think about the guys in Scandinavia that burnt churches, it’s connected to that kind of destruction, that fiery will against a former oppressor.”
When it comes to themes, SETH toy with listeners like cats with yarn. Even their song titles are misnomers. Take the atmospherically spacious, grandiose interlude Marianne for example. To many, Marianne is the symbol of the French Revolution, personifying liberty, equality, fraternity, and reason. For SETH, it’s a tribute to a fallen soldier of black metal, LSK. Known as a member of blackened doom outfit SECRETS OF THE MOON among others, Marianne ‘LSK’ Séjourné took her own life 11 years ago.
“When Heimoth was writing this song, we talked about our will to dedicate the album to our former friend that disappeared, and I said why don’t you call that song Marianne because it’s a connection with the concept of the French Revolution,” explains Saint Vincent, as a clearly moved Heimoth adds, “it just hadn’t crossed my mind, I was really shocked that he suggested this, and I was like okay, that’s the perfect title for this acoustic track, which is in a way kind of bold, because this is in the middle of the album, and it is reminiscent of what used to be done in the past in the 90s in black metal albums, just like DISSECTION.”
As SETH look more and more to the past to mark out their future, 2025 marks 30 trips around the sun for the purveyors of French black metal. The reason they’re not only still standing, but releasing the best music they’ve made, is that in their minds, they drive down different lanes to everybody else. “I think we’ve always been rather different from the other French metal bands, both in terms of sound and in terms of the writing,” declares Heimoth matter-of-factly. “In a way, I’ve felt very close to French black metal, but equally very far, as I think we stand out from that scene somehow.”
Standing on the shoulders of giants comes to mind for a band who’s lofty legacy is still being written. La France des Maudits doesn’t rest on its laurels. It’s progressive, it’s gothic, and it’s grandiose. It’s everything Heimoth believes SETH are in comparison to other French black metal bands, and it’s been that way since 1995.
“It’s not like we started playing BURZUM or doing the DARKTHRONE thing, like many French black metal bands actually believed that playing guitar was just enough to play black metal, which I don’t think so. I think we did consider music, possibly as one of the first French bands to play black metal, so a lot of people said we sounded a bit like DISSECTION and all those bands, and obviously we used to listen to the Scandinavian scene at the time.”
“I don’t think that these remarks could go to any other French bands and that’s fine by me. At least the French metal scene has managed to create something very specific, but I’m not sure that we do belong to that scene.”
La France des Maudits is out now via Season Of Mist.
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