Artist: Hell Militia
Country: France
Label: Darkness Shall Rise Productions
Formats: LP / Cassette Tape / CD
Year: 2025
In recent years basically every record has been reissued, at least once. But there is still a bunch of albums that has never seen a proper reissue in years, and although I don’t feel the urge to jump onto every record that has been put out again (at least in terms of reviewing), some of them are very much worth the attention. One of those albums is the debut album of Hell Militia. ‘Canonisation Of The Foul Spirit’, originally released in 2005 by Total Holocaust Records, in my book is a criminally overlooked album. Just like the band, as a whole, gets too little recognition for their contribution to the French Black Metal scene. So, thanks to Darkness Shall Rise Productions, here we have a new edition of that grandiose record.
The fact that this specific album isn’t regarded as a milestone in the French Black Metal scene perhaps has a multitude of reasons. But one thing is for sure, the music on offer is not one of them. While the mid to late 90’s were dominated by the harshness of the bands gathered in Les Légions Noires the early 00’s were the years of Antaeus. A band that was already formed some seven years prior, it was their debut album ‘Cut Your Flesh And Worship Satan’ that sent a shockwave through the French and international Black Metal scene. That bare and massively aggressive album was a hammer blow in sonic form and set the standards for what French (underground) Black Metal was all about.
Hell Militia was formed in 2001 and clearly built on the foundations of their native Black Metal scene. After a 4-way split 7” with Antaeus, Deviant and Eternal Majesty released in the same year of Hell Militia’s inception, the band laid ‘Canonisation Of The Foul Spirit’ on the table. The album was received with mixed receptions and feelings. With an obvious musical resemblance with Antaeus, Hell Militia also blended in some of the crudity that typified Les Légions Noires back in the 90’s. The latter was not in the least because of the trademark vocal antics of Mütiilation’s Meyhnach, arguably the most influential French Black Metal musician from that era. Mixing what you could define as “the best of both worlds”, may not have been something that many people were ready for – at least judging from the reactions and reviews at the time (just read some of those old reviews on Metal-Archives), but it turned out to be an album that had an uncredited role in laying the foundation of France’s future in Black Metal.
That propulsive, contrarian and overall unsettling feeling that characterized the best works of bands like Aosoth found its foundation on this first Hell Militia album. In addition to putting down these musical basics, Meyhnach’s vocals have actually rarely sounded better after the classic Mütiilation records.
Without wanting to argue over who (and when) the actual “French sound” started, it is definitely the case that Hell Militia played a vital and oft overlooked role. Even today, the band is still not receiving the deserved recognition of their records. Despite the fact that none of the succeeding albums brought this exact unsettling and oppressive atmosphere, Hell Militia remains true to its musical roots yet always manages to reinvent itself within the self-imposed creative framework.
So, both within the confines of French Black Metal and in its own discography, ‘Canonization Of The Foul Spirit’ is an exceptional record that more than deserves to be brought to our attention again.
