Artist: Katalepsie
Country: France
Label: Self-Released
Formats: Demo Tape
Year: 2025
In today’s conversations about Lo-Fi Black Metal we usually refer to bands like Sanguine Relic, Mons Veneris, Black Cilice, Orgy Of Carion and the likes. Some 20 years ago it meant something different. Today Lo-Fi Black Metal largely refers to a sort of chaos-driven and predominantly just noisy kind of Black Metal that is unlistenable for the majority of the Extreme Metal fans. About two decades ago the latter was also the case, but the music itself wasn’t chaotic nor was it very noisy, it was “just” Raw Black Metal but poured in an even harsher sounding mould than your average Darkthrone-based Black Metal band.
Katalepsie, a one-man band from Paris, France, is one of those bands that easily could’ve been around during the period in which this sort of music started to become more common, let’s say somewhere between 1998 and 2002. The very cornerstones of Katalepsie isn’t much different from those aforementioned Darkthrone-inspired bands, but it is the incredible harshness of the “production” that gives this project a very profoundly nostalgic mood. It bring back memories from days long gone, times in which basically all the demo tapes I was able to track down were either driven by the speed of Marduk or the rawness of what Katalepsie just brought to the table.
‘Initial Spasm’ is nothing original, but I would be surprised if that was the intention to begin with. Not sure whether the nostalgic vibe of the music was a deliberate starting point either, but it works splendidly regardless. The simplicity of the repeating riffs in combination with the rather short playing time of just seven minutes and a half makes this a very striking debut from a project that I will definitely keep an eye on. Only 10 copies of this demo tape have been made available, so enthusiasts or those interested should not wait too long.
