blackguard profugus mortis

Released: 13 April 2009 Label: Nuclear Blast

Blackguard are a French-Canadian band originally formed under the name of Profugus Mortis who won an international “battle of the bands” competition on Myspace run by Nuclear Blast in 2008.

Deciding to change their name to Blackguard the band have chosen to keep a link to their past by using their previous name as their album title. The same, however, can’t be said of their music if, as is claimed, they formed as a ‘straight ahead black metal band’ in 2001. Admittedly this is my first encounter with the band so can’t compare anything on Profugus Mortis to the band’s previous material but there’s only the merest hint of black metal anywhere on this album (mostly in the mid-section of The Sword) with the band sounding more like Children of Bodom playing Finntroll songs than any of the Scandinavian hordes.

There was a time when both the Children of Bodom-esque blend of the heavier aspects of power metal with the more melodious aspects of death and black metal and folk metal were fresh, innovative and exciting but now there’s such a glut of bands doing both styles that you really have to be doing something spectacular to get noticed. Sadly though, as technically talented as Blackguard undoubtedly are their music is a tad uninspired with the keyboard handling the parts most other bands play with traditional folk instruments these days and very few memorable melodies. It would be crass to suggest a band that has been around since 2001 were merely jumping on the bandwagon of the recent boom in folk metal but they really don’t add anything new to the folk metal canon and their songs simply aren’t strong enough to rise above that lack of originality. They’re not a bad band at all... just an OK one.

by Neil Woodfin