La Boule Noire & Association Le Boucanier
19:30
20:00
27.54
An emblematic American death rock outfit, the band founded in 1979 by the late Rozz Williams (1963 – † 1998), then led from 1985 onwards by Valor Kand alone (vocals, guitars), has gone through a thousand incarnations, approaching both dark glamour and harder spheres of expression than those inherent in the original gothic (metallic hardening between 1994 and 2000 with Sexy Death God, for example).
Nevertheless, the gothic feeling remains its most fertile field of expression, as demonstrated by works such as Atrocities (1986 – the first studio opus from Valor-led Christian Death, and a master stroke), or the more recent American Inquisition (2007), The Root Of All Evilution (2015) and Evil Becomes Rule (2022).
Significantly more technological, the sound has been refreshed in its appearance, but sports death-rock guitars more proudly than ever, some as typical as in the Catastrophe Ballet period (1984). With The Root Of All Evilution and Evil Becomes Rule, Valor returns to more Bowie-esque vocals, while Maitri Nicolai on bass delivers a raw, punk-accented rhythm. Dark emanations, a critical sense, pride in body: Christian Death sticks to its fundamentals. More than ever protestors of an institutionalized representation of the religious and bearers of an assumed sexual imagery, Kand & co revive on stage a protean, nervous back catalog filled with a black sap of which only these Americans, debated in the goth public but persevering as hell, know the secrets.
Christian Death is undoubtedly the founding and emblematic band of death rock, the ancestor of gothic rock.
Support : Saigon Blue Rain