Anyone here with a fondness for Forbidden Site?

[Ellestin]

They were one of the first French hordes to spice up their (mostly black) metal with wide strokes of artsy avant-gardism back in the mid-90's, and I think they did it pretty well, even if the clean vocals are gruesome at the best of times. Their songwriting was quite off-the-beaten-path and libertine, I find, with a use of "chamber music"-like orchestrations close to what Elend did on their early albums.
Also their texts were very insightful and well-written, with more than a few nods at French classic authors, such as Lautréamont, Balzac or Hugo (hear the opening speech on "Der Sieg der Finsternis"). And the fact they were openly advocating monarchism adds up to a colourful and unusual profile.

Anyway so much for the facts, here are some extracts from their two albums. Once again this stuff is not genius, but for a band existing on the sideline of the whole metal circus they're worth a late acknowledgement.

Sturm und Drang - 1997
Der Sieg der Finsternis

Astralgeist - 1999 (much more mature as a collection of songs IYAM)
Plus ne m'est rien
La Chouanne

 

[Krilons Resa]

pics not working.

 

[Ellestin]

pics not working.

fix'd (?)

 

[spikes77]

This is some good stuff here. The songs are all over the place in the same style as maybe dornenreich, but have that distinct french style to their riffs. There's also a lot of clean vocals here(in the operatic vein). Another band not too far off this path would be arcturus. The bass is quite prominent on all three songs, which is always a good thing in my book. I would recommend the Plus ne m'est rien
to start with. Good recommendation, if you're into this stuff :Shedevil:

 

[skyrefuge]

huh, weird. I assumed that I was at least aware of every mid-90s artfaggy post-black metal band, but I've never even heard of these guys. Probably a little hard for me to get into them now, but I bet if I knew about them back then, I'd be all over this shit.

For some reason the vocal section in the middle of "La Chouanne" sounds like a Latin pop song to me, which is awesome.

Obviously they came up with their name before they new about the Internet. "403: Forbidden Site!"

Neil