French ravenous black metal band Hegemon arose by the end of 1995 with the same line up, up to now. France is not a country known for its black metal artists, but rather for its good wine, its camembert and its French bread. France is also known for their great football players and their legendary chauvinism. In fact, very few black metal bands originate from France except for Aneroxia Nervosa and Seth and probably a couple of others I have forgotten.

After a first album Chaos Supreme released a couple of years ago, this band strikes back with a second album much more technical, and mature. The nine featured devastating tracks on By this, I conquer combine the coldest and most traditional black metal with modern death metal parts. I could not say it better. Here is no mainstream black metal à la Dimmu Borgir, but rather some true black metal savagery unleashed upon the hungry black metal masses. Their modern true old school black metal reminds me a lot of bands such as Enthroned, Setherial or even Marduk in terms of brutality. Members themselves tend to describe their music more as a war metal act than a simple black metal band. They also say lyrics do not deal with occultism but with wars in general, conflicts between men from the depths of time, with a special attraction for the Middle Ages. The band really manages to capture the essence of their beliefs with some little surprises, such as calm acoustic guitar parts or bagpipe that are disseminated throughout this album. The band has again recorded at Tymix Studios in Montpellier but I have no information who produced this album. The production is astonishingly great and powerful and helps make this album one of the best creations in the raging black metal scene. I am not saying this is the masterpiece of last year, but it is most certainly a high quality extreme, raw and brutal black metal release full of intensity and aggressiveness.

Sometimes this job helps you discover great bands that you are unaware of. Had I not got a promo of this band I would have certainly never heard of them. This stuff is highly recommended to the people who can handle ravenous and raging black metal.