Mémoire de Neige

Mémoire de Neige - Sous le Joug
Angels are Whores of Satan Prostiductions, 2011
Genre: Black Metal

1. Sous le joug de la misère et de las ouffrance
2. Derniers soupirs
3. Aux confins du Néant...
4. Empreintes de guerre
5. Nostalgia











This second release from Mémoire de Neige is actually quite a bit longer with less songs. Here we have all new songs from the project and it seems the only recording they ever made of this music was a live recording in Paris. I'm not sure what happened with the project after this, but it appears to have split up after this, I'm not sure how shortly after, but they never made studio recordings of any of their songs. They released this, once again, as a tape only release with a pro-printed booklet and limited to 123 hand-numbered copies, of which I own #32. This is certainly one of the more random limitation numbers I've come across...

The recording quality is the first thing that will probably put people off to this recording, but you can only expect so much quality from a live recording like this. For what it is, the recording quality actually isn't too bad, you can certainly hear everything, but sometimes hearing crowd conversation or other crowd noise during songs kind of takes you out of the space. There have a been some line-up re-arrangements by the time this recording rolled around. S. Hassvarth, now called Wolfkrieg, is no longer only handling the guitars. Désolation has also moved onto guitar, but has kept the vocal position and a new bassist Affliction has become involved. This has kept the core sound of the first demo present in the new songs, but they've allowed for a bit more interplay between the two guitars. For example, there are a couple guitar solos here and there. Thankfully, it's not many, because they are not all that great and don't seem to fit with the music that well.

I'm sure this music would have sounded a lot better if it wasn't a live recording. There are certainly moments that sound great, so the music is likely on par with the first release. However, the recording quality and crowd kind of mar the level of enjoyment you would really get out of this material. I feel like Désolation upon having this project end and moving onto Caterva Runa took a lot of influence from this project and put it into Caterva Runa. In the end, if I ever decide to delve into this project in the future, I'll probably stick with listening to the first release, because it has a far better listening experience. Again, I wish they had recorded this material in better quality, because a lot of this music is actually very well composed. Ah well... all we have of these projects are the two tapes and I suppose it is better than nothing in the grand scheme of things.

Mémoire de Neige - Aux funérailles de l'hiver
Infernal Kommando Records, 2009
Genre: Black Metal

1. Intro
2. Quand la neige recouvre le passé...
3. Aux funérailles de l'hiver
4. Terre de souvenirs et de légendes
5. Forêt d'antan
6. Outre Monde
7. Outro









Delving once more into my demo tape collection and looking through a bunch of these French demos I have. This time I have another project related to Svartkrig and Hasserben, but this project produced only two demos and called it quits. Mémoire de Neige sounds quite a bit different from those other projects and from what I hear on this demo it was a rather promising project. This tape has a heavy cardstock type of booklet and a dubbed tape.

Mémoire de Neige is a far more somber project than the other projects that these members were also involved with. There is even a bit more of a melodic touch to the music, which gives the structuring a much deeper feel to it rather than your standard Raw Black Metal that just sounds like Darkthrone worship. Some songs have that sinister dissonant chord structuring that we tend to hear from the French camps, but Mémoire de Neige really does switch up their songwriting quite a bit in its style. They do a good job of writing excellent riffs that range from droning, moody to fairly catchy. They also have a bit of that distinct medieval quality to a lot of their songs that I love hearing in more ancient Black Metal. If they had recorded this with better production I'm sure this would have caught peoples attention a lot more instead of having the project disappear into obscurity.

I think this is an excellent first demo from this project and I wish they had done a lot more with it. Either way, if you're looking for demos that were actually pretty well done, then this is one of them. The production could have certainly been a little better, but the song writing is there and it's well done in that regard at least!