I realize it's been ages since my last "French Metal Friday". How long exactly I'm not sure, but it seems like it was a long, long time ago that I last wrote an article. But, here we are now and the reason why I've resurrected the series today is all because my eight-grader, Matt, is taking high school French this year and as we were talking about France and it's modern music scene I thought it was about time that I cover their metal scene. Today's feature is a bit different then usually by the fact that I don't psychically own any material by this female-fronted band. I've only heard this 5-piece act on Youtube and on their home page which features a pop-up radio station. Formed in 2001 in Paris, Île-de-France the band ended up releasing 2, 3-track demos (2002 and 2003) and a 2004 EP called "Party Time". It's kind of interesting that the 6-track EP featured a cover of "Zombie" by The Cranberries. Anyway, the band was only active until 2010 or so and did release one full-length recording called "Entertainment" in 2008. After the split their co-lead singer Sarah Layssac (who is reportedly also an actress) would go on to play in another French band called Arkan which, odd as it might sound, is a melodic death metal act that employees Middle Eastern elements into it's sound. OK. Anyway, this band featured both female and male vocalist (the group's rhythm guitarist Sky also sang alongside Sarah) with the female vocals being more smooth and mellow while the male parts come off as more harsh in a sort of death metal/ thrash metal style. As crazy as that sounds it did work for the group whose sound, if I was cornered and had to describe it over risk of death, was a combo of heavy power metal, melodic thrash and old-school heavy metal. Often the sound heard from this female-fronted band was heavy (well, duh), but in a "for the first time in it's life heavy rock finds out about thrash metal and gives it a go after a year or two of intense training" where the lead guitarist (Sevh) just "goes for it" while our man Sky provides the same sort of crunchy playing that made Scott Ian so popular. The Outburst also featured bass player Araneae (who now plays guitar in another French band called Blashyrkh) and drummer Kmy who collectively made up a smashing good rhythm section. Even if the band didn't set out to reinvent heavy metal thrash in their own image, they had more then enough going for them as "Entertainment" proved. Reportedly they described their own style as "hedo metal" while the Metal Archives uses the addition term "post-thrash". I'm not so sure about that one, but The Outburst seemed to me to almost be like a female-fronted Tourniquet with equal access to both bands like Anthrax and Metallica and modern rock radio. If anyone has any more info on this band or knows where I can get a copy of their EP and lone album here in the states it would be much appreciated!
http://www.theoutburst.com/index.php?lien=news
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