Yyrkoon
| Yyrkoon | |
|---|---|
| General information | |
| origin | Amiens , France |
| Genre (s) | Death metal |
| founding | 1995 |
| resolution | 2007 |
| Last occupation | |
| Laurent Harrouart | |
| Stéphane Souteyrand | |
initially keyboard, later electric guitar |
Geoffrey Gautier |
| Victorien Vilchez | |
| former members | |
Electric guitar |
Fabien "Fack" Desgardins |
Electric bass |
Sébastien Caron |
Electric guitar, vocals |
Paul Banas |
Electric bass |
Kristofer Lorent |
Electric guitar |
Jérôme Barouin |
Electric guitar |
François Falempin |
Drums (live) |
Dirk Verbeuren |
Drums (live) |
Pierrot |
Electric guitar (live) |
Nicklaus Bergen |
Yyrkoon was a French death metal band from Amiens that was formed in 1995 and split up in 2007.
history
The band was formed in 1995 and was named after a fantasy series by Michael Moorcock . At the beginning the group consisted of the guitarist and keyboardist Stéphane Souteyrand, the drummer Laurent Harrouart, the singer and guitarist Paul Banas and the bassist Sébastien Caron. A first self-produced demo under the name Oath, Obscure, Occult followed in 1996. As a result, the group reached a record deal with Velvet Music International . During the recording of the debut album, Caron and Banas left the line-up, whereupon bassist Kristofer Lorent and guitarist Jérôme Barouin joined them. For the recordings of the debut album Oniric Transition , Souteyrand also took over the vocals and Jeff Gautier played the keyboard. The recording work took place in the French Walnut Grove Studio in 1998. After the release in the same year, the band recorded the EP Forgotten Past . The sound carrier was released in 2000 and comprised two songs. After the recordings, Barouin left the band, whereupon they played with only one guitarist for the next seven to eight months. The gap was finally closed with the arrival of François Falempin. At that time, the bassist Lorent Yyrkoon left and was replaced by Victorien Vilchez. Then they went on tour with groups like Gojira , Misanthrope and Septic Flesh .
After performing in Paris in 2001, the band became the first group to sign a record deal with Anvil. Corp . The contract was for the release of two albums. In 2002 the album Dying Sun was released . The album was distributed in Europe, Japan and Russia . While working on the third album in 2003, Falempin left the band and Gautier switched from keyboard to electric guitar. Before the recordings, Dirk Verbeuren was hired as a drummer and it was decided against Harrouart. Occult Medicine was recorded at Hansen Studios in Denmark in November 2003 . The band broke their contract with Anvil. Corp and instead signed a two-album deal with Osmose Productions , about which the album was released in October 2004. Since the band could not keep a stable line-up, appearances to promote the album were hardly possible. Only a small European tour was held. After the release, the group also performed with Impaled Nazarene . In 2005 the group performed at Fuck the Commerce . After the return of the drummer Laurent Harrouart, the next album Unhealthy Opera was released in February 2006 . This includes the song Horror from the Sea , in which Andy LaRocque can be heard as a guest musician. The sound carrier was also recorded in the Hansen Studios. The group also went on tour through Europe with Nile and Psycroptic . They also performed together with the local band Devastator in Hamburg . Towards the end of the year the band held gigs in the Netherlands , Switzerland and Belgium . In early 2007 the band separated from Gautier. After a few appearances, the founding member Souteyrand left the band, which meant the breakup of Yyrkoon. The band held their last on February 17, 2007 in Lille, France .
style
Aapatsos from progarchives.com calls the band's music Progressive Death Metal . In terms of text, topics such as occultism , horror , fantasy and personal world views are dealt with . In terms of sound, the music is comparable to that of technical death metal bands such as Death and Gojira, but also Hypocrisy . The early releases would incorporate violins , flutes, and female vocals , among other things .
Allmusic's Eduardo Rivadavia wrote that Yyrkoon was formed as a melodic death metal band. During their creative period, the group experimented with many styles of metal . Elements from Ambient , Dark Metal and Black Metal were processed on Oath, Obscure, Occult and Oniric Transition . On Occult Medicine , the previously added influences from Dark and Gothic Metal were lost again and replaced by an aggressive mix of Death and Thrash Metal . The keyboard sounds that are superfluous for him have also disappeared again. Unhealthy Opera sounds similar .
David Perri wrote in The Collector's Guide of Heavy Metal Volume 4: The '00s about Occult Medicine that Death Metal can be heard here, influenced by Entombed or like the typical Sunlight sound. The electric guitars would be reminiscent of the aforementioned Entombed or Dismember . You can also hear influences from Thrash Metal in the songs. Yyrkoon has a lot in common with the Sunlight studio band Kaamos : On the one hand, a band name that is strange and cannot be marketed, and on the other hand, the records would deserve it, despite low sales, if metal fans encountered it again in the future. In his review of Unhealthy Opera , he noted that the band is difficult to assign to a genre. But roughly the band would play Death Metal. The music is comparable to that of Gojira, even if Yyrkoon is less important for the genre. Perri noted that a large part of the lack of success can be attributed to the band name and album title, since these are complicated and unmemorable.
Martin Wickler from Metal Hammer noted in his review of Oniric Transition that the band depends on most of their genre colleagues, especially on the lead guitar . The album cover suggests average Black Metal, but the music could almost pass as Progressive Metal "for dark freaks". However, the group has "neither the compositional maturity of Emperor nor the feeling for arrangements of the Arcturus brand ". Nevertheless, the album serves with "wacky sounds, nifty breaks , traditional passages [and] innovative ideas". In the review of Occult Medicine , the same magazine found the band sounded talented and motivated. It is a "cold, tough, ultra-brutal" album and is "precise and above all with dizzying changes in tempo, sometimes extremely fast pepped, then deep groove- scars tearing death iron ". The song Revenant Horde one could listen to black metal bonds and also the song Doctor X as Marduk - riffs on. In addition, the group processed influences from heavy and thrash metal. A year later, Gunnar Sauermann reviewed Unhealthy Opera and found that it was clearly influenced by American death metal bands such as Morbid Angel . Thematically, the texts deal with the Cthulhu myth .
Discography
- 1996: Oath, Obscure, Occult (demo, self-publication)
- 1998: Oniric Transition (Album, Velvet Music International )
- 2000: Forgotten Past (EP, self-published)
- 2002: Dying Sun (album, Anvil. Corp )
- 2004: Occult Medicine (Album, Osmose Productions )
- 2006: Unhealthy Opera (Album, Osmose Productions)
Web links
- Official website ( Memento of January 11, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
- Yyrkoon at Discogs (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Biography. yyrkoon.net, archived from the original on October 14, 2004 ; accessed on November 17, 2015 .
- ↑ a b c d e f Aapatsos: Yyrkoon biography. progarchives.com, accessed November 16, 2015 .
- ↑ a b c d e Bio. Myspace , archived from the original on November 12, 2012 ; accessed on November 17, 2015 .
- ^ Anzo, Sadoni, Petra Schurer: Festival: Fuck the Commerce . In: Metal Hammer . July 2005, p. 82 f .
- ^ Anzo Sadoni: Live Nile . + Yyrkoon + Psycroptic + Devastator. In: Metal Hammer . July 2006, p. 128 .
- ↑ Eduardo Rivadavia: Yyrkoon. Allmusic , accessed November 17, 2015 .
- ↑ Martin Popoff , David Perri: The Collector's Guide of Heavy Metal Volume 4: The '00s . Collectors Guide Ltd, Burlington, Ontario, Canada 2011, ISBN 978-1-926592-20-6 , pp. 565 .
- ↑ Martin Wickler: Yyrkoon . Oniric transition. In: Metal Hammer . February 1999, p. 87 .
- ^ N. Setzler: Yyrkoon . Occult Medicine. In: Metal Hammer . February 2005, p. 109 .
- ↑ Gunnar Sauermann: Yrkoon . Unhealthy Opera. In: Metal Hammer . April 2006, p. 120 .