DECASIA LIVE AT SUPERSONIC, PARIS. LIVE REPORT IN ENGLISH
OKAY, SO LET’S START WITH AN ADMISSION THAT WE DIDN’T ACTUALLY KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT DECASIA UNTIL A COUPLE OF DAYS BEFORE THE GIG WHEN ANGIE AT NRV PROMOTION GAVE US THE GREEN LIGHT TO GO AND COVER THEM FOR K-RPM. THAT’S THE WAY IT GOES SOMETIMES. LUCKILY, WE HAD A LOT OF SPARE TIME AHEAD OF US.
Wednesday lunchtime, lying on the sofa, so hungover that even the Face ID on my phone couldn’t recognise me, we dove straight into a streaming frenzy, eating up Decasia’s album, An Endless Feast For Hyenas, playing it repeatedly over the next few hours, before diving back into their EP from 2017, The Lord Is Gone. Every so often I would yell across the room to an equally immobile Hutch, ordering him to check out a specific track. Ultimately, we were in agreement: this was exactly the kind of music we needed. “Stoner doom“, “heavy psych“. Yes please, and thank you.
Hailing from Nantes, a mere 30kms from the now-legendary centre of the French metal world, Clisson, Decasia are Maxime Richard on guitar and vocals, Geoffrey Riberry on drums and Fabien Proust on bass. Now we know.
But let’s just fast forward to Friday night, Supersonic in the 12th: Occupying the slot between Greyborn (who we just missed but sounded great) and headliners My Diligence (who we enjoyed from the bar upstairs), Decasia appeared on stage just after 9 to set their gear up while we vocalised from the small
corner under the windows about the kind of crowd they had attracted. But being gear-freaks, our attention was drawn more towards the stage than the people who came to watch. Not only we were stupidly excited at the sight of SG’s and Rickenbacker’s being pulled from guitar cases, but we were particularly drawn to the rather elaborate looking pedal and speaker cabinets that were appearing on the stage as well. Very interesting so far. If nothing else was going to come out of tonight, cool photos were a surety.
But all those thoughts and comments were quickly blown out of our minds as soon as the band kicked-off their set, starting with something that, despite our immersion into their music over the last 48 hours, we’d never heard before. Their social media had promised their fans a surprise, and, as it turns out, the surprise arrived immediately in the form of a new song – and what a killer opening it was.
From then on, the setlist focussed mainly on material from the excellent Hyenas album, the intensity of the songs when performed right in front of us living up to the promise of the recordings, the live atmosphere, as you’d expect, taking them to another level. Decasia’s music may be described as, among other things, “stoner doom” … but it has an energy to it that we’ve quite frankly never managed to summon-up whilst stoned. Or straight for that matter.
Bassist Fabien Proust, thundering away on his Rickenbacker like a frenzied John Entwistle, drummer Geoffrey Riberry – exactly who you’d want behind the drums if you were going to play with such a doom-laden groove and vocalist/guitarist Maxime Richard, his guitar-playing style instantly explained when we saw that he plays with his fingers, no pick, a style I’ve always found quite mesmerising. It was hard to know which one of the three to focus on, every one of them was so impressively “on it”.
It was during the relatively chiller moments that it clicked that we were listening to artists, and I don’t just mean in the musical sense here. Decasia have their own style. There was something that I couldn’t quite put my finger on … until a few days later that is when I learned that, for example, those very, very cool pedal and speaker cabinets on stage are built by singer Maxime himself, the impressive artwork for the album designed by the band. Decasia embody an all-encompassing creativity, and ultimately that comes across where it matters – in the music.
It was one hell of a set, it all just happened so fast. Supersonic’s closed-in, euphorically claustrophobic atmosphere was the perfect surrounding for this short but bombastic, second-on-the-bill set, the band’s Parisian fan-base loving it, new recruits, like us, instantly won over.
Hellfest awaits. We know you didn’t need another reason to be there, but we’ll give you one anyway: Decasia will be opening the Valley Stage on Saturday 17th so if you’re going, make sure you get up early (or just stay up from Friday night) and check them out.
