How the 2024 US Election Led to an Outsider's Very Strange Deep Dive into Quebec Black Metal

It all started with the election.

I swear.

It's become a passion project for me wrapped up in International Relations, sensitive political topics, hit and miss albums, and some killer metal.

In case Threads doesn't make it as long as this blog (seems possible), Threads is a microblogging platform from Meta released before Zuck went divorced dick, as an alternative to X/Twitter/BlueSky. I left Twitter while it was still Twitter, never finding a home until Threads, which is now in peril from the Divorced Billionaire Lite but still sticking with it for now.

In the days before the election as it became apparent Kamala Harris was going to lose, Canadians began posting funny posts on their Threads offering to become their Emotional Support Canadian (ESC) over the coming days to help Americans deal with it. I took a few of them up on it, because I felt it was fun and a good way to build community. Harlo I just shared jokes and memes with. Nathaniel, I asked for bands. A couple different times. He responded with a few, but one really stuck.

My journey started into Quebec black metal just started as an Emergency Support Canadian recommendation of a 2024 black metal album I hadn't heard - Cantique Lépreux - La Bannissmente. I loaded it up in Apple Music (now I use Tidal but that's what I did). 

I'm going to iterate on this album posting format for when I post album covers here. I like to give a little more context and information. We'll post a few more from Cantique Lépreux before we're done here.

I was completely hooked on this album and listened several times. It had a lot going for it that I really liked. It was haunting. The vocals were pained screams, emotional. The music was technical, tremolo picked, fast, with fast drumming, fast guitars, but it was beautiful. It was very guitar driven with just the right amount of keyboards blending guitar tracks together and complementing perfectly. Often, a second guitarist came over the top with a high, screaming harmony or second melody that added to the beauty and haunting nature.

I was hooked. I needed more. I asked for more. Nathaniel responded with an older but good Québécois release, Délétère's 2023 release Songes d'une Nuit Souillée. This was an album that was very balanced between keyboard led atmospheric black metal and guitar driven melodic black metal with a mean streak. This is a band with albums about plagues and pestilence and they were in the right place for an end-of-pandemic, anger-fueled rampage album.

Those albums both hit me square between the eyes, but, honestly, I didn't seek it out right away. I got distracted by the election results and depression, and 2024's year end album chase got in the way, which included huge taste-shifting albums from Aara and Dödsrit to process. I would say those albums were similar to these in my shift in taste away from death metal towards black metal. 

As I got my bearings back and my mind straight, I was back to this, ordering and downloading albums associated with keywords like "Black Metal Quebec" "Black Metal Canada" "Black Metal French Canada" and discovering new ones like "Quebec City Metal" "Quebec City Black Metal" and "Metal Noir Québécois". 

Of course, then the tariffs and hostilities opened up between the US and Canada, which only strengthened my resolve to learn more about Canadian and Quebec metal. So this will be an ongoing series about my journey into Canadian metal.