It seems France is the most interesting country at this moment when you’re looking for original and good quality black metal bands. One example to support this statement is Sael, which was founded in Germany but relocated in France where they released their first album Océan.

Although the structures of the songs are quite complex and technical, they are relatively accessible. The tracks are quite long, but without boring your brains out due to the variation in speed, the guitar solos and the typical black metal shrieking vocals without getting weary.

The cover of the album depicts precisely the atmosphere you most probably will experience when listening to the four songs. There is a certain sense of grimness in the music, but not in the cold way you might expect from a technical black metal band. I don’t mean to say you get a warm and fuzzy feeling, but the music somehow comes across as unforced and natural which gives it a more sympathetic character.

The production is of a good quality and I can only conclude these guys know exactly what they are doing without getting pretentious. It’s not exactly the kind of album you listen when trying to relax with some background music, because it most certainly will draw your attention to the riffs or the drums sooner or later. So if you dig the kind of black metal in which the musicians obviously have put a lot of effort making it close to perfect and you don’t get all itchy when stuff turns pretty technical, Sael is worthy of checking out!