Album review: Rise Of The Northstar – CHAPTER 04: RED FALCON SUPER BATTLE! NEO PARIS WAR!!

French heavy music is on a charge at the moment. From red hot upstarts LANDMVRKS and Novelists, to the all-conquering Gojira and Alcest, there’s never been a better time for fans of headbanging with Gallic flair. Emerging from the mean streets of Paris 17 years ago now, Rise Of The Northstar litter their songs with French language and the pithy hip-hop stylings of their homeland, but what’s still most remarkable is the clash of nerdy Japanese pop culture and bloody-minded New York hardcore.

From the unwieldy album title to a grimy-yet-colourful aesthetic, CHAPTER 04: RED FALCON SUPER BATTLE! NEO PARIS WAR!! owes much to modern anime franchises like Neon Genesis Evangelion and Demon Slayer. Yet the slamming musicality is mostly Madball and Sick Of It All. At its blockheaded best, it’s brilliant. Ultra-speedy single Falcon, for instance, feels like the sort of banger a 15-year-old might write with the benefit of a big budget and decades of earned experience. And it’s impossible not to be swept up as Beastie Boys influence bleeds in on the defiantly low-IQ A.I.R. Max.

Attempts to crank the style, however, lead to more mixed results. A segue between the free-flowing rap of Under to the battering Pressure is nowhere near as clever as they think it is, while Solitary Homeboy sounds like the work of other teenagers, these ones taking themselves far too seriously.

On balance, though, there’s a lot more fire than fudge on CHAPTER 04. From the French swagger of Back 2 Basics to the climactic earthquaking bottom-end of Desolation Hawk and the soothing 75 Outro, it’s a reminder that, for all their ups and downs, ROTN remain a band operating on their own oddball terms. And they’re all the more interesting for it.

Verdict: 3/5

For fans of: LANDMVRKS, Stray From The Path, ten56.

CHAPTER 04 is out now via Kuromaku Corp