REVIEW BOVARY "MES RACINES DANS LE DESERT"

Maybe France is not the first country which comes to mind while speaking about Black Metal, nevertheless well known and / or outstanding bands such as Mütiilation, Antaeus, Osculum Infame or Gorgon, Vlad Tepes (and other "Les Légions Noires"-bands) are or were based there. By the way, there is an very interesting documentation called "Bleu Blanc Satan" about French black metal  including deeper insights in the minds of some of the protagonists.

Bovary from France are often labelled as Depressive Black Metal or "DSBM" ("Depressive suicidal black metal"). Let me go back a bit further, to be honest I never was very attracted by the subgenre called Depressive Black metal or bands labelling themselves using the acronym "DSBM". Yes, I like some records by Shining and sometimes I listen to Wigrid (which surprisingly came back from the dead and released a third full length last year), but in general I was relatively bored by the always same mixture of slowly or mid-tempo orientated  black metal combined with pictures and covers of knives cutting into own flesh or people who hung themselves etc. Often "DSBM" was used to cover up the lack of musical abilities and ideas of the bands concerned. 

Of course there are or were highly innovative bands such as Bethlehem or Forgotten Woods which  often served as some kind of blueprint for a lot of this so-called "DSBM" - groups, Shining for example were heavily influenced by Bethlehem (and as a result, Niklas Kavarforth contributed vocals to the re-recorded version of S.U.Z.I.D., which , by the way, wasn't very appreciated by the most fans of Bethlehem). But these bands played in their own league and had little to nothing in common with all these countless bad copycats.

You can get some deeper insights into some bands microcosms by reading the newest book of Dayal Patterson "Black Metal: Into the abyss", in which bands who are associated with the term DSBM such as Hypothermia, Nocturnal Depression, Deinonychus, Trist, Psychonaut 4 and the already mentioned Forgotten Woods are featured amongst other black metal acts.

But let's talk about Bovary, a group from a small town called Embrun in the south-east of France. Hearing the name Bovary, most people will think of " Madame Bovary", the world famous Roman by Gustave Flaubert. Sanit Mils Records re-released the first demo recordings of the band named "Mes racine dans le desert" ( "My roots in the desert") from 2017 /2018 on vinyl, limited to 100 copies. At this time in 2018, the band's line up consisted of three young women.Today, only Ravn who plays guitar in Bovary, is still active in the band. These recordings have a duration of 37 minutes, and maybe the reader will be suprised due to my previously expressed dislike concerning most of bands who are filed unter "DSBM" etc., I like it really. I couldn't listen to it every day, in my case a special mood is necessary, but in contradiction to many bands of this genre, these recordings seem to be "true"-it's music played with passion and instensity and not a sequence of boring and stupid, repetive riffs which never seem to end.

Maybe one reason for the strong unfiltered emotions which are expressed in this recording is the young age of the three musicians, youth is an period in life where emotions and views are often expressed unfiltered and in an direct way with an "with us or against us"-attitude, so to speak "friend or enemy" with nothing in between. Of course Bovary's music contains these unfiltered depressive and melancholic atmosphere or "attitute", but it's much more than that, it contains sad, captivating melodies and good song structures- I personally would have welcomed if the band would have used more often faster and "ordinary" black metal structures for varying their sound image. To sum up, if you like your metal more introspective and sad and if you're into bands such as Deinonychus, Bonjour Tristesse, Shining or Wigrid you should listen to Bovary immediately.