This album has several things going for it before I put it in the stereo - awesome, absolutely indecipherable logo; a proud declaration of their current status as "Gallic Pagan Metal"; a high potential for over-the-top epicness with songs running 11-15 minutes long. It's another recent offering from Rusty Axe too, which almost guarentees that this is going to be some sort of raw, idiosyncratic outsider black metal. This one-man band is the first French black metal project that I've heard from Rusty Axe, I think, which is kinda weird when I think about it considering the label's predilection for fucked-up black metal, which France exports by the bushel. Compared to a lot of the stuff coming out of France lately, Giamon is actually pretty conventional style-wise, playing a brand of majestic, woodland-obsessed black metal filled with epic, regal riffs, folky elements, and furious buzzing guitars. It's closer to the sounds of older Ulver, early Drudkh, and older Forgotten Woods (without the weird psychedelic stuff). Where Giamon takes this sound and turns it into something uniquely his is how he assembles the buzzing, blurred riffs and loping drums into these epic prog-length arrangements that stretch out to over 15 minutes (as on the track "The Essence". Lots of parts, and lots of repeated riffs create a hypnotic atmosphere that works to evoke feelings and images from the rural French countryside, each song immersed in forest worship, the riffs majestic and melodic, drums mostly midpaced, the production is raw and stripped down but everything cuts through clearly, and the vocals are a distant distorted blur, shredded screams and shrieks clouded by the mist of hiss and high end treble that envelops the album. Everyonce in a while, the music erupts into weird blasts of noise, or dark harmonium-like drones, or fades away into long stretches of forest noise, birds chirping and the sound of running water suggesting the sounds of primordial wilderness, but mostly Giamon keeps this stately and hypnotic, letting each epic song unravel in a tapestry of buzzing ambience and trebly folk melodies.