The first album from French electronic black metallers Pavillon Rouge, Solmeth Pervitine almost comes across as a hardcore techno/industrial album first, with the black metal aspect bleeding through from below. So right off the bat a lot of black metal fans are going to spurn this band because of the dreaded "t" word, but for those of you who dig the decadent electronic-infested violence of such bands as Aborym, Mysticum, Blacklodge, latter-day Dodheimsgard, Alien Deviant Circus, Diapsiquir and the like, this is a ferocious album seething with hypnotic, pounding rhythms, mangled electronic noises, feral black metal riffs and a subtle but noticeable darkwave influence.

Opener "Solmeth Ascension" injects the droning minimal buzzsaw-crush of second wave black metal into a blasting backdrop of hardcore techno, the glitched, skittering rhythms draped with icy riffs and layered screams, adding in a bit of that baroque, carnivalesque melody that you often hear in certain French black metal circles. Tracks like "Sept Si�cles Et Le Feu" bring more violent menace to the sound, with traces of distorted rave synth and Goblin-like soundtrack elements blending with the blasting black techno metal, even as it delivers one of the catchiest and most anthemic hooks/choruses on the album. Same goes for "Sadist Sagitarius" (which is actually a cover of the American deathrock band Cinema Strange) and "Jad XTC", both extremely catchy techno-BM anthems with these monster choruses that'll rattle around in your head for awhile. There's a lot of infectious hooks like these on Solmeth Pervitine, more than most bands in this style, and the black metal side of their sound isn't half-baked at all, it's really well structured, with tight, ferocious riffing executed at a high level of aggression. Some of the other songs go in more of an industrial metal direction, "Exub�rance/Exaltation" and "Le Cercle Du Silence" have more of a Wax Trax feel with their pounding machine-metal crunch and flourishes of darkwave influenced moodiness, while "Evangile Du Serpent" combines crushing blackened riffs with piano lines and bursts of frenetic drum n bass, one of the few points on the album where the band incorporates junglist moves. "Des Cimes, Des Ab�mes" offers a surrealistic soundscape of abstract electronic noise, ancient phonograph records cut up into sorrowful requiems, and deep-space static, leading into the skull-pounding trance of "Le Grand Tout S'Effondre" at the end of the disc.

One of the better industrial/electro black metal albums I've been listening to lately (and I've been listening to this a lot), it's decadent, debauched, and oozing with cruelty, and especially recommended to Aborym fans...