New experimentation from Berlial.

After an album in 2022, CzH (vocals/drums) and HellSod (guitar/bass/keyboards) return to their intriguing mix to create Nourishing The Disaster To Come, their second album, released via Source Atone Records and My Kingdom Music.

The Last Dance opens with intriguing, airy keyboards, but the rawer, more dissonant underpinnings quickly take over, bringing that abrasive Old School feel before moving back into the strange and disquieting, especially vocally. Harmonics also take on unexpected complex shades, accompanying the track in its heady madness before reaching almost ecclesiastical sonorities with Nouveau Monde, the next track, which in turn adopts a dark, howling feel. Although the instrumental calms down for a moment, the vocals remain as visceral as ever, but the break doesn’t last and the rhythmic pattern ignites again, drawing on a rather atmospheric Black Metal that unites the two relatively opposed elements, before giving way to We Deserve to Fall Again after a final acceleration. The composition remains rather mysterious at first, letting keyboards and then a sample establish its heavy ambience, which drags on until finally allowing the darkness to settle in and lead us to the spoken words that temporarily replace the vocals, and then to this new lowbrow sample that makes the long track even more chaotic. Vocal diversity and a jerky instrumental set the pace for the twelve minutes, before Ivresse de la Finitude delivers its gloomy introduction, the better to overwhelm us afterwards, offering alternately moments of pure rage, majestic choruses and imposing passages coupled with orchestrations, but also moments of melodious floating where we catch our breath before the final surge. Nourishing The Disaster To Come immediately catches fire, displaying a palpable virulence, but as you’d expect, the various influences eventually join the riffs, placing here and there more hypnotic keyboards, distressed cries and piercing leads, but the track is ultimately quite short, and gives way to Le Néant Pour Eternité and its soothing yet curious introduction, followed by the very negative sampled voice that lets the instrumental gradually come to life and finally surround us with its melancholy, giving rise to singing, screaming and crying, but also to much more violent moments.

Berlial‘s Black Metal is constantly tinged with intriguing, unexpected and complex touches, but I must say that the mix is still very coherent. Nourishing The Disaster To Come reminds me of pure madness, the one that strikes without warning and takes hold of us forever.

90/100

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A few questions for the band Berlial about the release of their new album Nourishing The Disaster To Come.

Hello, and thank you for your time! Without using the usual Metal labels, such as “Black Metal”, how would you describe the band Berlial?
Berlial: Berlial‘s Extreme Metal is polymorphous, and can be ambient, melodic or, on the contrary, dissonant. While some tracks are guitar-driven, others may be based on keyboard strings to create a harmonic spectrum. The structures are intended to be progressive and immersive, but we also leave the listener some reference points. Ultimately, we try to offer a broad BM that draws equally on traditional, DSBM, Blackgaze and Sympho. We integrate elements of Avant-Garde, Noise/Indus, Electro or even Rock. The aim is to create suggestive, narrative music for this second effort.

The name Berlial is a blend of Beria and Belial. Why did you choose to combine these two names? How do you personally relate the name Berlial to the band’s music?
Berlial: The idea was to combine a biblical figure with a historical one to highlight a critique of human development in its ecosystem. The human species is an ogre, the devil is within us, in our collective manifestation and structuring. Man is the end of men. What’s more, if philosopher Ernst Cassirer distinguishes humans from other species through their capacity for abstraction, and therefore their symbolic power, it is precisely this very symbolism that is leading us to our downfall and fuelling the disaster to come. Our idols (religion, finance, technological development, etc.) are leading us to our downfall. That’s the meaning of the band’s name. On an individual and personal scale, the duality of a personality that is well-integrated socially, but which has long run to its doom through addiction, the inner demon. This theme is clearly reflected in the music, with film extracts scattered throughout We Deserve to Fall Again and Le Néant Pour Éternité.

Nourishing The Disaster To Come, your second album, is about to be released. How do you feel about it? Have you had any feedback on it yet?
Berlial: We can’t wait! This is a teenage dream come true. The first thing we did was get some feedback from the labels we canvassed, who were quite encouraging about our approach, even when we didn’t fit in with their audience or their artistic direction. The feedback we’ve had on the singles we’ve released so far has been positive. The number of listens is quite gratifying.

How would you sum up Nourishing The Disaster To Come in three words?
Berlial: I’m going to borrow a phrase from Monsieur Matthieu Yassef: “total Metal”. Because of the ambition of the music through its singularity, the links with CzH‘s books (some lyrics are poems from his 2017 collection, Violence des petits riens), the visual universe and especially the video for the 2nd single with its references to Burlesque.

The album Nourishing The Disaster To Come will be released in early 2025. Why did you choose this name for the album, and what does it mean?
Berlial: There are two levels of interpretation in this expression. The first is a collective one, highlighting the capacity of the human species to destroy its environment in the race for growth, refusing to face up to its finitude. The second, individual, concerns our relationship with addiction. The addict, knowingly, is unable to break out of his or her routine until he or she reaches rock bottom. We can see the similarities between the two levels of reading, and to tell the truth, when we look at the course of the world for too long, we feel like taking psychotropic drugs to help us through.

Since its creation, the band has always mixed “traditional” Black Metal with airy, Shoegaze and Dungeon Synth-oriented elements… How do you manage to strike a balance between your different influences? How does the creative process work within the band?
Berlial: For this second album, we tried to learn from the first. The first album was very patchwork, and we could go from a Symphonic Death chorus to a break with an 80s solo. It was almost a compilation. We wanted to keep the richness of the first album but create coherence with the second. So we opted for longer tracks. We tried to create a common thread in the sonic tessituras: the keyboards, the atmospheric guitar tracks, the vocal work. And within this framework, then add openings to different styles. In terms of composition methodology, each song is based on either an idea from Hsod or CzH. But in both cases, it’s Hsod who is the architect of the song in terms of arrangements, part sequences and so on. Hsod took courses with Edgard, our producer, so that he could work on the demos in advance of the studio sessions. This has enabled us to be more structured. What’s more, there are now only two of us, and we both have to be OK with every idea.

On the first album, guitarist Tromgeist was mentioned, but he doesn’t appear on Nourishing The Disaster To Come. Is he still in the band?
Berlial: Tromgeist left the band even before the studio recording of the first effort, due to lack of time, and he’s in Brittany while Hsod is in Alsace and CzH in the Paris region. We credited him because he had contributed a few riffs on certain tracks, but Berlai has been a duo since 2021 and is not destined to change because we have a governance that allows us to try many different things that remain Berlial. By the way, our current logo features the letters of the band’s name and those of our surnames.

You both use pseudonyms, and the promo photo doesn’t show your faces. Why did you choose to remain anonymous?
Berlial: Well, our identities are easy to find on Facebook, and you can see CzH‘s face in the clip. It’s an aesthetic choice above all. While we try to offer an original BM, we revere its essence and archetypes: patronymics and the concealment of the face are part of this, especially in its reading of the 10’s and Post Black.

While the artwork on the first album was relatively disturbing, this one, by Jeff Grimal, is quite majestic, almost poetic. How did your visual desires evolve? And what about your collaboration with Jeff, did you give him any guidelines?
Berlial: For the first one, we were really into a DIY approach. So it was easier to use historical photos. The idea for the cover came from a visit by CzH to the Tallinn museum and the Soviet nurseries in the Baltic states. The reverse is a photo of an American mother who actually sold the four children from her first marriage. For this second album, we had the idea of the 6th continent of waste, in line with the lyrics of We Deserve to Fall Again. We wanted a figurative style that remained suggestive, not clean-cut, and therefore more of a landscape. Jeff‘s world fits the bill. What’s more, he doesn’t have a unique style, so we were already anticipating future collaborations. So, initially, we shared this idea of the 6th continent, with its raw materials and play on textures. From there, Jeff proposed 6 sketches that were paintings, and that got us thinking: the Styx, the souls of migrants (cf Nouveau Monde), Charon, etc. We wanted Jeff, but not to be totally Jeff in his comfort zone, and the result is there. He really got involved, and the collaboration, apart from its quality, was very pleasant.

I know it’s a tough question, but do you have a favorite track on this album? Or the one that came most naturally to you?
Berlial: Not difficult at all: We Deserve to Fall Again, that’s our masterpiece. I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to do a song of such ambition and efficiency again. You can take us to task if we give you the same old “this is our best effort” line for the third album (laughs).

Nourishing The Disaster To Come is being released in collaboration with Source Atone and My Kingdom Music.
Berlial: The link between the two labels is Christophe Denhez. We contacted Source Atone for our first album, and sent them the demos. Chris suggested that we work with Edgard at Lower Tones Place Studio, and he dropped by to do a feat. We got back in touch when we finalized the demos for the 2nd album in September 2023, to suggest that he do another feat (on the title track). He put us in touch with Francesco from MKM and pushed hard. Chris is a very close friend of mine, and once Francesco had confirmed that he’d signed us, we got straight down to talking with Arnaud and Chris about physical distribution in France via them. A configuration like that of Ecr Linf, Chris‘ band. Chris has released almost all his projects over the last 10 years with the august Italian label, and our style is very consistent with MKM‘s artistic direction (Cultus Sanguine, Lors Aeghos, etc.). So it’s super fluid and above all a meeting of enthusiasts. MKM gives us an international strike force and visibility on Spotify thanks to integration in various playlists. Francesco is a great guy, with a lot of experience and a real commitment to his bands. Source Atone allows us to work with Agence Singularité to support our visibility in France. And CzH is a big fan of the label’s roster (Sycomore, Salo, Néfastes, Saar, Maudits, Usquam). Source Atone is also Yann, the ultimate goat of the French Post scene (laughs).

I haven’t found any record of a live show for Berlial. Do you plan to get up on stage one day to perform your songs? If not, why not?
Berlial: No live dates planned. We could be clever and quote Fenriz from Darkthrone, but it’s mainly for logistical and time reasons: we’re two 500 km apart, fathers of separate families with time-consuming jobs. When we have time, we prefer to create rather than travel miles and rehearse. Never say never, however, but the next few years will be dedicated to continuing our creative work, and we already started composing the 3rd album some time ago.

What are Berlial‘s next projects?
Berlial: That makes a good transition from the previous question. Yes, we’ve already got 4 tracks and a nice box of ideas for the 3rd album. We’re going to take a more constant direction throughout the album, which will be a form of concept (not narrative but thematic) closely linked to CzH‘s literary work.

Are there any musicians or artists you’d like to collaborate with in the future?
Berlial: Yes, given the theme of the 3rd album, a female voice would be appropriate, like that of Jessy from Usquam or Adèle from Houle. CzH‘s ultimate dream would be a feat by rock star Rose H. or AK, a genius whose projects are very influential for Berlial (Neo Inferno 242 or Decline of the I). 

Do you think you’ve improved as a musician with this album?
Berlial: We’ve both clearly taken a step forward: Hsod in arrangements and also in recording, since he’s been taking lessons with Edgard, he’s got the ability to get into styles he doesn’t know apriori and understand the essence of them to translate it back into his style. CzH has worked on his placement and breath. He’s a vocalist, not a singer, unlike Hsod, but he’s managed to find his voice, and you can recognize it because he’s really worked on interpretation.

Last question: what dish would you compare Berlial‘s music to?
Berlial: A local Alsatian specialty: “seuilmav”, or stuffed pork stomach. Taste it.

That was my last question, so I’d like to thank you for your availability, and the final words are yours!
Berlial: Thank you very much for your interest, your time and the relevance of your questions. It’s really gratifying that scene activists like you allow us to spread our music and talk about it. It’s a really pleasant thing to do. Hail Acta Infernalis, we hope you’re not doing too badly.