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Reviews

Halloween — Le Festin
(Musea FGBG 4365.AR, 2001, CD)

Le Festin Cover art

It has been seven years since Halloween last released a studio album, despite the release of a live album and the occasional festival gigs. For their new album, the band has combined the dark, menacing atmospheres of Laz with the consummate maturity of Merlin. The results are clearly the band’s finest work to date, the fulfilling of a long history of potential. Every piece here is a gem. There is the gloomy, dark “Le Retour du Bouffon,” an intensely powerful piece, like a distillation of the best moments of Laz. The over ten-minute “Shéhérazade” shows Halloween incorporating Middle-Eastern textures and modals for a profound departure, a piece that develops mystically and belies Halloween’s previous mythologies, the type of forward-stepping so uncommon in symphonic rock today. “Coma” is multi-segmented, trading off between heavy riffs and introspection for the most dynamically varied piece on a broad-arching album. It is most assuredly this diversity that is the album’s overall strength, presenting a wide variety of moods and textures well-balanced by the vocals from violinist Jean-Philippe Brun and, now, very special guest Géraldine Le Cocq. The results are eight impressive compositions that will delight even the most skeptical fan of symphonic rock. Le Festin is indeed a feast for the ears.

by Mike McLatchey, Published 2001-07-01

Halloween's last release, the live collection Silence... au Dernier Rang! proved to be the last with guitarist Jean-Pierre Mallet and bassist Christophe Dagorn. They have been replaced by Stephane Kerikuel and Emmanuel Martre, respectively, though the band is still centered on keys player Gilles Coppin and violinist / singer Jean-Philippe Brun. What about Geraldine Le Cocq you ask? The good news is that she lends her wonderful voice to five of the CD's eight tracks though the bad news is that her status is now that of “very very special guest.” Whatever the changes, they have all resulted in Halloween's finest work to date. With the their Lovecraftian origins cast off, Le Festin is simply excellent from top to bottom. The characteristic Halloween penchant for the slightly surreal and bizarre are intact, as seen in “Sheherazade,” a portrayal of a pre-teen Iranian prostitute in Brooklyn, and “Carnage,” a song about schoolyard killers. Lyrics are mostly in French, and all are extremely well done. The arrangements are stellar as well, allowing the group to alternate freely from delicate restraint to slightly swinging rock to Crimsonesque heavy riffing. There's an almost imperceptible jazzy undercurrent to the material, most pronounced in Geraldine's vocals and in certain of Kerikuel's solos. It carries the restrained and superb “Araignée,” where the vocals suspend delicately over the instruments. Maturity and sophistication infuse Le Festin, imparting the kind of quality that demands respect. Play this one for your friends and my guess is you'll have some converts. Easily Top 10 material and my highest recommendation.

by Paul Hightower, Published 2001-07-01

Growth is a good thing. Looking back at the very early days of Halloween, its safe to say this band has come a long, long way. Le Festin is a beautifully bizarre, often haunting, album which showcases the band having reinvented itself. No longer is this a top-notch symphonic prog-rock outfit, but now they have become something like a French answer to Thinking Plague. The music is sparse but energetic, experimental but delicately expressive. “Shéhérazade” is the standout centerpiece in the set, and other pieces such as the fragile “Spider” and the cacophonous title track are in sharp contrast to one another. There are perhaps too many spoken passages here, generally used on tracks where Geraldine Le Cocq is absent, but her performances still remain the vocal highlight of the album. With stellar performances all around, and excellent production, this is one item not to be missed.

by Dan Casey, Published 2001-07-01

Filed under: New releases, Issue 22, 2001 releases

Related artist(s): Halloween

 

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