Quo Vadis - Live in Montreal (2007)

Regardless of my mediocre response to much of this band's studio work, I think it's painfully obvious that Quo Vadis are a band who take their time with each release until the product is flush with both their standards and expectations. This is surprisingly uncommon in the metal genre, where 'hot' bands are won to pump out albums with haste and as much consistency as they can muster, to hopefully ride out some sudden wave of success. There is no better example of this than their 2007 double-album Live in Montreal, which offers the fan nearly 90 minutes of professionally recorded music from all three of their studio albums (ignoring no period of their growth).

This was quite the production. The performance is from 2005 at The Medley, and the band pulled out all the stops to make it as memorable and thorough as possible. Not only do they employ several guest musicians to round out their set, including Oscar Souto of Anonymus, Alex Auburn of Cryptopsy, and Dominique Lapointe of Aetheretic and Augury performing the whole set on bass. They also use a 20+ person choir on a few of the tracks. In addition, when perusing the photos in the booklet they used some interesting visual performance art to complement the musical aspect, with women posing in statuesque positions, etc. Perhaps it might come off a little tacky, but the band obviously wanted more for the audience than just a plug in and play session, and judging by the almost studio quality of the live mix, they wanted the 'product' of Live in Montreal itself to stand the test of time for any involved in a later listening.

As mentioned, the band perform a large amount of their material here. Keep in mind, they've got only 3 albums...so a 90 minute set will comprise a large amount of their studio output. As this was 2005, and Defiant Imagination was the current 'hotness', it is here in its entirety: "Silence Calls the Storm", "In Contempt", "Break the Cycle", "Tunnel Effect", "To the Bitter End", "Fate's Descent", and "Dead Man's Diary". Even the interludes "In Articulo Mortis" and "Ego Intuo Et Servo Te" are here, complete with choir to open the 2nd disc. The Day Into Night track list includes "Absolution", "On the Shores of Ithaka", "Mute Requiem", and the band dips farther back into Forever... with "Carpae Deum", "Legions of the Betrayed", "Inner Capsule" and "Pantheon of Tears". They also perform "Vital Signs", which was on their original demo and later re-recorded for the Passage in Time compilation. I'd imagine it's pretty much the 'dream set' for a Quo Vadis fan.

The songs sound just as crystal clear as their studio counterparts, and while I'm still not a fan of Stéphane Paré's vocals, he's solid over all the material, bantering to the crowd in his native French-Canadian and keeping them psyched for each foray into the band's history. Dominique Lapointe is all over the place, showing that he's no mere 'fill in' for a Steve DiGiorgio or Remy Beauchamp, but every bit, if not more capable in technical ability. Yanic Bercier is ever the devoted hammer, and Bart's guitars are perhaps the most impressive, tightly strung alongside William Seghers (of Neuraxis), who is also joining the band for this monumental live. It's not hard to choose favorites from the set, as they perfectly mirror the favorites I had from the studio albums: "On the Shores of Ithaka", "Vital Signs", "In Articulo Mortis", and "Break the Cycle".

I'm not a Quo Vadis fan, and thus not the target market for this release, but it's pretty much the 'love letter' you'd want from a band to its audience, and as far as live offerings, it is probably well worth the music if you enjoy their albums Defiant Imagination and Day Into Night. Of course, the sound is so polished that you almost feel as if you are listening to one of the studio works, so you may feel a little bit of overlap. Still, the band pulls off the material remarkably well live, with fewer glitches than most bands I've seen through the decades (and that is a considerable number). The band excels in this setting, and to be honest, from the sidelines, I found this more enjoyable than any of their full-length albums.

Verdict: Win [7/10]

http://www.quovadis.qc.ca/

Quo Vadis - Defiant Imagination (2004)

Defiant Imagination is the third album of the Canadian Quo Vadis, and arrived with some very high expectations, as their sophomore effort had created a stir among the modern metal sect. A Canadian melodic death metal band worth its salt? Impossible! The story of this album is quite interesting, as the drums were recorded first and then the guitars and harmonies re-written to run consistently above them. You can kind of hear it, too. The drums are intense and heavy, with many thundering double bass rolls and a nigh constant barrage of aggression. Unfortunately, the rhythm guitars here are for the most using the stock Swedish sensibility for melodic predictability, with some later Death-like progressive flourishes mixed in, and the only times the album really grows more interesting is where the band diverts away from this meandering miasma of dulled down inspiration.

Although I would disagree with the popular notion that Defiant Imagination is the band's best album (listening back, I'd have to argue that their peak was Day Into Night), there is one draw to the album that you did not hear on the predecessor: Steve DiGiorgio. In the years leading up to this effort, several of the band's core members had departed, including original bassist Remy Beauchamp (who was a talent in his own right), so Bart and Yanic hired on DiGiorgio for the recordings. Now, I've never been extremely impressed with DiGiorgio's talent as a songwriter, but as a bass-merc on a progressive/melodic death metal album, he excels, and his adventurous, fluid performance is perhaps the one thing here that keeps the ship from sinking below average. The new vocalist Stéphane Paré is decent, but not much to get excited over. He reminds me of Mikael Stanne (in fact, this entire album reminds me of a more technical, extreme alternative to Dark Tranquillity), albeit less powerful, with a stock, monotonous grunt that lacks much in the way of emotion, even when backed up by the occasional gang shout. I think I honestly preferred the more Carcass-like tones of his predecessor, but this has never been a band to excel in the vocal department.

If Defiant Imagination had been released today, it would probably be considered another in a long list of forgettable melodeath records with generic (if busier than usual) mosh breakdowns. But at the time of its inception it was still slightly more progressive than average, and I should note that, aside from a few of the lyrics, there is nothing quite so pedestrian about the effort that went into this. Writing around drums is an interesting prospect, and the bass is a marvel, but I find it pretty telling that the two tracks to stand out here were the operatic interludes "In Articulo Mortis" and "Ego Intuo et Servo te", which demonstrate that the band has not fully shaken the classical influence and gothic experimentation of their debut Forever... from their systems, but at the same time, the male and female vocal performances are very good in these two, short pieces. As for the rest, they dance along like sprites celebrating in a Swedish glen, invisible or uninteresting to my mere mortal perceptions, the baubles of bass being the one distraction to perk my ears and tilt my head.

"Silence Calls the Storm" and "In Contempt" explode past in a cloud of boring guitar riffs, with little but the bass and concrete drumming to enthrall. It's not until "Break the Cycle" that the band tries something more interesting, a slower, dynamic track with great bass cycles and a subtle touch of prog and funk that captivates at least for a few brief seconds. Sadly, the lyrics here are dragged down by a pastiche of cliches and forgettable 'inner struggle' lines like 'Open your eyes, open your mind', 'life goes on', and 'the road to hell is paved with good intentions'. Well meaning, positive and inspirational, but very distracting when they're being barked at you in an accented growl. The kind of lyrics you'd essentially expect from most other North American metalcore/melodeath bands more passionate about the product and placement than any lasting imagery they could summon. "Tunnel Effect" is much like the first two tracks on the album, almost impossible to remember even seconds after its conclusion. Of the rest, "To the Bitter End" and "Dead Man's Diary" at least offer some melancholy and precision melody, though nothing that would warrant an immediate re-listen.

There are certain components of Defiant Imagination which destroy the utter sum of its emotional resonance, so some credit should be given for its unusual manifestation and the slow process by which it was assembled. The bass and drums are prim and polished, perhaps too much for my own tastes, but there is no denying that this rhythm section put in an enormous effort. Where the album becomes lackluster is in the dressings. The guitars, while proficient and often diving into the technical precision of the prior album, are simply not that invigorating. The vocal performance, while not 'weak', is sodden and average, the type you could have phoned in by any more established growler on a binge. The two opera segues are well done, but they account for only 2 minutes of the 40 here. The rest of the tracks become more interesting the further they venture away from the rather humdrum, melodic death core. This simply doesn't occur with enough frequency, and even when it does, the results are only mildly curious.

Highlights: Break the Cycle, In Articulo Mortis, Dead Man's Diary

Verdict: Indifference [5.5/10] (some are caught in the moment)

http://www.quovadis.qc.ca/

Quo Vadis - Passage in Time (2001)

Just one year after Day Into Night, Quo Vadis were riding pretty high on buzz through the underground, due not only to the polish and relative accessibility of the album, but also to their technical merits. A trait not all that common in melodic death of the time, but highly popular among an emerging metal culture that was seeking almost anything of distinction to separate itself from the tired cliches of the past, and the relative drought of creativity that the 90s had ushered in after hard rock and metal took a nose dive from the arena to the curb. The time was right to strike, and thus Passage in Time comes as quite a handy little fan package, to tide the fans over until their third full-length, Defiant Imagination, which was still several years and line-up changes from happening.

This is no mere cash grab, but an offering in good faith of some new material, a few live tracks and the re-issue of the band's 1995 s/t demo, which ironically I happen to find among the best of their material, regardless of its production. So it helps that the very first track on this is a re-recording of "Vital Signs" from the demo, with the band's modern tone and crunch. This is a fairly stock thrash/death track with perhaps a bit of technicality, though the riffs are not nearly so complex as what we've heard on the full-lengths. They continue to use a mix of Carcass-like grunts and snarls, but there is an honest, vibrant energy to enforce the track's title. "As One" is a track very much in line with the material from Day Into Night: scorching melodic guitars, dynamic awareness and the band's signature lack of mundane repetitions. There is also a re-arrangement of the track "Hunter-Killer", also from the sophomore effort, but to me it does not seem worse for wear.

The live tracks included here are "Dysgenics" and "Mute Requiem", both also taken from Day Into Night, so it was apparent the band had far more confidence in this material than the debut Forever.... They sound decent on stage here, in fact "Mute Requiem" is clean enough that is nearly mirrors its studio incarnation. But the real rabbit in the hat here is the inclusion of the Quo Vadis demo, barring "Sans Abris", which was included with Forever... (and is rather weak due to the closing vocals, I might add). "Vital Signs", "Element of the Ensemble" and "Sons of Greed" all represent a cruder approach to the band's hybrid of thrash and death metal, and one I happen to actually dig. From very early on, this was a band experimenting with tempos and progression in their music, and though there are few individual riffs among this triad that stand out in my memory, I enjoyed the more brutal, hostile presence that is conjured not through the rough production alone, but the band's straightforward savagery (as in the middle of "Sons of Greed"). "Sadness", on the other hand, is a brief, throway acoustic outro which pauses for a hidden live violin segment.

If you're a Quo Vadis fan, than you'd undoubtedly desire this compilation for both the newer material and the chance to own the remainder of the original demo. I probably stand alone in believing that the band might have had more potential if they had persisted in the more punishing sound of the demo, but I found it refreshing regardless, at least for those three songs. Really there is only one new track, "At One", and it's consistent with Day Into Night, but maybe not enough to throw your money at if you've already got a demo. In addition, this is one of those enhanced multimedia discs which includes the video for "Dysgenics", which is a simple black and white shot of the band performing the song. It's not very exciting, but then, few videos are. In the end, other bands have done far more wrong by their fans than this.

Verdict: Indifference [5.75/10] (conceptualize the pain)

http://www.quovadis.qc.ca/

Quo Vadis - Day Into Night (2000)

It's obvious that the Canadian Quo Vadis put the intervening years (1996-2k) between their debut Forever... and this sophomore effort Day Into Night to good use. While it's not perfect, and I still have a difficult time remembering the specific tracks and riffs when I'm not actually listening to them, the increased production standard is a boon to the listener, allowing he or she to digest the band's manifold intensity as it was intended, with a clear and crisp mix that truly brings the guitars out to the fore. The band had ditched the more experimental frills for this album, i.e. you won't hear as much spoken word with violins, or further flirtations with female vocals.

This is also a more aggressive record, but much of its excess energies are transferred by the mix. The band still uses a few different harsh vocal tones, but they seem better streamlined, and they are perhaps the primary reason this album reminds me of the last two Carcass full-lengths, due to the balance of the vox with the highly melodic guitars that are rooted in thrash and classic heavy metal. Perhaps it is best compared to a mix of Heartwork/ Swansong-era Carcass with Arch Enemy's Stigmata or Burning Bridges, but it doesn't sound quite like any one thing, so the air of authenticity is remained, especially when you consider just how shitty the majority of American melodeath bands were (whether from the States or Canada), having already begun the infusion of metalcore breakdowns with melodic Swedish guitar riffing and the mix of awful clean and overbearing harsh vocals.

No, Quo Vadis were never quite so lame as these bands, and Day Into Night is a solid album into which obvious effort and creativity were placed. It still suffers from a lot of the 'straight through both ears' syndrome, but at the very least there are some songs which offer a few melodic, passionate surprises in their depths which manage a means of emotional escalation, as opposed to the debut which was a writhing bore. Much of the material alternates between mid-paced rhythms and technical, melodic thrashing outbreaks.

"Dysgenics" is a steady rocker with a few chugged breakdowns and a rock & roll spin to it which reminds me quite a lot of something like "Keep On Rotting in the Free World" by Carcass. "Let It Burn" and "Hunter-Killer" are fairly complex compositions which throw a number of tempo changes your way, and the latter once again reminds me of later Carcass due to the vocal interaction with the melodic, forward thrust of the guitars, though the musical tone is far lighter. Probably the one song I truly enjoyed on this album, "On the Shores of Ithaka", has a few surprises in store, starting off with bone crunching melancholy and later assuming a breakneck speed in which the guitars evoke a fallen majesty through their sorrow-laden speed and complexity. I also prefer this deeper vocal tone. The closer "Cadences of Absolution" is also a pretty interesting track, with the better vocals and some very interesting rolling rhythmic outbreaks through which the guitars thread and thrust.

In fact, most of the songs do at least have 1-2 riffs which tickle the ear upon first listening, but not so much that you'd want to keep listening over and over. The album sounds as if a good chunk of money was thrown into its production (supposedly it was, courtesy of Hypnotic), and perhaps a little more refinement and writing was in order to merit the expenditure. As it stands, Day Into Night still feels like a melodic death metal band trying to substitute flights of frenetic technical frenzy for better songs that you stick in your brain long after the fact. It just wouldn't cut it, since you could turn your ears to Sweden and pick up the frequencies of their blustering melodic death metal scene, frequencies which offered both emotional and visceral impact (Soilwork, In Flames, etc). In some ways, though, the band's musical fluency makes a lot of sense, since they were coming up in a scene that included bands like Cryptopsy whose major selling point (that would spread like wildfire through the metalcore-thick ranks of US death metal fans) was the extremity of the guitar work. Quo Vadis made for a nice melodic counter to such hysteria.

There's no mistaking the superiority of this album to its predecessor Forever.... There, in 1996, was a band not worth a second listen, but here you'll discover an obvious thirst for perfection, a hunger for better songwriting and crisp, busy guitar riffs that would probably have the six string nerd digging for tablature if he wound up taking to them. Good drums and bass remain here, and it's one of the finer turn of the century Canadian metal albums as far as its high level of studio polish. It's a damn shame that so much of this sinks into the port lobe only to eject itself through the starboard side a mere few moments later.

Highlights: On the Shores of Ithaka, Cadences of Absolution

Verdict: Indifference [6.75/10] (words flow from the wounds)

http://www.quovadis.qc.ca/

Quo Vadis - Forever (1996)

By the mid 90s, I was quite burnt out on metal music, having seen the entire genre climax between 1986-1990, and then suddenly, as through some cosmic event, a massive collapse of ideas in the face of the public's shift in interest towards grunge, industrial, 'alternative', hip hop, gothic and indie rock. I'm generalizing of course, and there were still a great number of strides being made in the newly birthed genres of death and (2nd wave) black metal, but apart from a rare gem from an established act, the more traditional sub-genres had dwindled into stardust. How did we go from albums like Master of Puppets, By Inheritance, No More Color and Coma of Souls to a heap of mundane drivel which couldn't even compete with the roots of thrash or speed metal?

It's like there were some giant, contagious lapse in ambition within the minds of even the genre's most seasoned creators, many of whom decided to jump off a bridge with fatal and unnecessary directional shifts in their careers. Though shortened attention spans and the most extreme forms of metal were beginning to take a stand against the more popular music of the period, it wasn't until the dawn of melodic death metal where the energy and momentum of the late 80s would resurface. Most of this developed overseas (later Carcass, At the Gates, In Flames, Arch Enemy, Dark Tranquillity, and so forth), and would usher in the giant wave of miserable clone-core that has yet to subside today. Here in the States, it was pretty much all death metal, or hardcore, or you were in the margins. But to the north, several Canadian bands were rising to the challenge, creating complex hybrids of thrash and death metal with an emphasis on both technical skill and versatility. Among these were Obliveon, Martyr, Neuraxis, and Quo Vadis.

Now, I'll be blunt. I've never really cared for Quo Vadis. Several within my circle of friends had begun to listen to them as early as their debut Forever (apparently one of them happened upon an import CD and the rest was history), and I've never quite understood the hype. To me, they were just another example of what I didn't enjoy about many new 90s artists: dull songs that attempt to impress through a technical edge alone, with very little writing ability. Surely the riffs on this (and subsequent albums) are not nearly as memorable as anything At the Gates did with Slaughter of the Soul, or Carcass did with Heartwork. But recently, as I've been going through so many of my favorite bands' discographies, I figured I'd borrow the discs and give this band another chance. Maybe I'll change my mind, eh?

Well, not with this album at least. Forever is the band's first full-length foray, and known for having a vastly inferior production to followups Day Into Night or Defiant Imagination. We're not talking a shit box recording here, the mix is quite clear (essential as the band are highly melodic and dynamic), but you can tell it's little more than a glorified demo level. As for the band's overall sound, this was ever one of their strongest points. They sound sort of like a mix of the later Death albums (Individual Thought Patterns, Symbolic, etc) mixed with melodic Euro death metal and progressive thrash. The solos are set to shred, the riffs are somewhat complex ("Legions of the Betrayed", "Pantheon of Tears", etc), and the arrangements unconventional. You won't find many standard verse-chorus-verse patterns in their writing, and the band likes to shift through a series of dynamics that keep the listener guessing.

These guys can play. Remy Beauchamp is a fiend on the bass, not to be shown up by the vitriolic axework of Bart Frydychowicz and Arie Itman, nor the seasoned foundation being meted out by Yanic Bercier. And while I wouldn't call them the most indulgent band of wankers this side of the Atlantic, they are certainly going to key you in to their individual. The band also incorporates a little experimentation through spoken word ("Mystery", "Nocturnal Reflections"), and they're fond of breaking for clean guitars, samples and so forth. Unfortunately, this experimentation also evokes some pretty boring breakdowns that feel alien to the band's more rapid paced thrashing, and a slew of vocals that today we'd probably attribute to an American metalcore band. Barks and grunts and screams and whatever it takes to force some emotion and momentum into the fairly forgettable music. One example of this is "Inner Capsule (Elements of the Ensemble Part II)", which opens with a hardcore yell alongside the grunting and sounds pretty terrible, with some scrawny death metal break rhythms that simply cannot save the clamor.

And that's really the biggest issue with Forever..., or Quo Vadis in general. Despite the obvious wealth of proficiency possessed by the band's roster, they simply cannot write a memorable riff here to save themselves. The songs are constantly evolving landscapes, and yet there is never some breathtaking surprise around any corner. You simply know there will be changes, and they will likely involve some wild guitars, furious bass playing and the inevitable eruption of leads. The over-arching note patterns are just not strong enough, and it's not saying much when the instrumental track ("The Day the Universe Changed") is the best on the album. The band also include a demo track from the previous year called "Sans Abris", a gentle, flowing piece with clean guitars and samples of howling winds that is suddenly destroyed by a shrill, inept female vocal near the track's conclusion, which sounds silly alongside the death bark.

I was far from impressed with this album back in the 90s, and it's even less interesting in today's climate. The songs are just as forgettable, and the band seems as if they're trying to pack in too many ideas, without letting any of them fully grasp the listener. The lyrics range from decent to mediocre, thoroughly existential garbage. Though malformed, the music is hardly a clutter, and I will at least laud the band for attempting something different. They sounded unique at the time, and they still seem so, but that's not always a selling point with me. Forever... might have the weakest production of their catalog, but it is the songwriting which really comes up short.

Highlights: Honestly, I cannot think of one. But if it's any consolation, their later albums are better than this.

Verdict: Indifference [5.25/10] (etched in anguish)

http://www.quovadis.qc.ca/