Les Fleurs Du Mal - Les Fleurs Du Mal

Goth music has come through many changes over the last twenty years, probably more than any other music genre. It has merged with rock, metal, folk, electro and always it created a respective subgenre. Still, there are a lot of bands today that insist on playing goth rock the classic way, as it was handed down by Bauhaus, The Sisters Of Mercy and Fields Of The Nephilim. Les Fleurs Du Mal is one of these bands.

Talking their name from the classic poetry volume of Charles Baudelaire, the young Swedes present us their first self-titled EP with five songs that jumped right out of the darkset depths of the 1980's. Steady bass lines along with the powerful and everpresent drum machine set the ideal soundscape for melodic guitar riffs and haunted keyboards, creating tracks that travel us back to the foundations of darkness, as it was presented to us by its own fathers. The scenery includes excessive male vocals which seem a bit limited but manage to grasp the essence and the spirit of the songs

Let's move to the tracks themselves: Two of them ("Stay Awake" and "Exclusion") are fast guitar-driven darkwave dynamites, ready to enter the setlists of goth DJs across the globe. "A Long Day's Journey" showcases the darker side of the band, with a pitch-black bass tune, majestic keyboards and mumbling yet straight-forward vocals. "My Funeral" is probably the best song of the EP, a deathmarch-type ballad that "borrows" its excellent keyboard tune from The Sisters Of Mercy's "Some Kind Of Stranger". The final track is "Astray", another down-tempo anthem that will leave all fans of the genre with a smile on their face.

Les Fleurs Du Mal's first EP honors the legacy created by the finest dark overlords. The band itself is an homage to classic goth rock, as their logos and promotional pictures would fit perfectly in an English dungeon of the late '80s. Here in Subexistance, as fans of old-school goth, we fully enjoyed their material. Yet the bet that the young guns from Stockholm must win is twofold: They have to reinstate the interest of a whole music scene for its own roots that seem to be steadily forgotten and at the same time they are obliged to create their own mark. This is the only way to stand out from a huge mass of bands that contains too much rubbish. For enough, it is enough to say that they are on the right path and we are looking forward to a full-length album.

Tracklist:
1. Stay Awake
2. A long Day's Journey (towards the night)
3. My Funeral
4. Exclusion
5. Astray

8/10 D.Damien.