“Slave music mixed with blues, a little jazz, electronics and black metal and all that with a dark Satanic theme? Zeal and Ardor is a band that simply can’t becompared with anyone else.” — Reflections Records
Devil Is Fine careens through a litany of genres — icy tremolo and harsh howls lead directly into a melodic death breakdown and blues singing, ritualistic chants butt up against neoclassical shredding, hip-hop beats boom-bap along under swollen strings and ululating vocals. “What is a killer like you gonna do here?” cushions hushed growls under a jazzy, vamping beat; “In Ashes” blends righteous hollering with blastbeats; the three-part “Sacrilegium” suite is all sprightly retrofuturist synth. It’s a glorious mess, and shouldn’t work…
…at all, let alone as well as it does.
Despite the Bandcamp tags, there’s not really much full-on black metal to speak of on Devil Is Fine (save for on the tremolo-speckled “Come on Down,” the “melodic death” tag is more accurate). There are many, many experimental music — metal, noise, and otherwise — albums out there, but none of them sound quite as human as this one. Only a truly curious, seasoned musician with little regard for tetchy genre constraints could have pulled this off half this well — and that musician’s name is Manuel Gagneux.
The rich, soulful croon that peppers Devil Is Fine and gives it its pseudo-Delta soul has been erroneously attributed to old recordings or samples, but don’t be fooled: that voice is all him, and really, a quick glance at the lyrics should’ve made that apparent from the get-go. He summons demons on the rippling synth-heavy “Children’s Summon,” and sings longingly about going home “to the flames” on the title track. That sigil on the album cover has never graced any priest’s vestments. There’s nothing spiritual about this record at all—unless, of course, you’re sending prayers down south to the Horned One, in which case, this shit is church.