The Great Old Ones - EOD: A Tale of Dark Legacy

By Calen Henry. The Great Old Ones (named after the cosmic deities within the Cthulhu mythos) play Cthulhu metal the way Sleep play Stoner metal: with complete devotion. They're all in. From band name through to musical style, everything about the band is steeped in Lovecraft.

By Calen Henry.

Cover art by Jeff Grimal.

The Great Old Ones (named after the cosmic deities within the Cthulhu mythos) play Cthulhu metal the way Sleep play Stoner metal: with complete devotion. They're all in. From band name through to musical style, everything about the band is steeped in Lovecraft.

Lovecraftian horror and the Cthulhu mythos in particular have long been lyrical themes in metal. Bands as far back as Metallica have touched on them to varying degrees and the Cthulhu mythos has proven a fitting vessel through which to channel heavy metal. Metal, and black metal in particular, uses themes of cosmic insignificance, world-weary nihilism, and demon worship. All are also integral to Lovecraft's world.

Photos by Francis Bijl.

Across their three full lengths—an album of Cthulu themed songs, a concept album based on At The Mountains of Madness, and now EOD : A Tale of Dark Legacy, a concept album based on A Shadow over Innsmouth—The Great Old Ones have channeled those themes through blackened post-metal.

Through their catalog they've moved from post-metal with blackened embellishments to focus their sound on the caustic black metal sound most recently thrust into the spotlight by Icelandic bands like Misþyrming. Though rooted firmly in black metal a lot of the post-metal influence remains, albeit filtered through the lens of dissonant black metal.

Photos by Francis Bijl.

The maelstrom often breaks into slow crushing grooves but with the same dissonant chords and intervals as the black metal as well as slightly dissonant leads layered over top. This approach gives the whole record a cohesive sense of foreboding and a pervasive wrongness, another important tenet of Lovecraft and something lacking in much Cthulhu themed metal. Even the final track, a long ambient acoustic album closer oozes foreboding like an evil Agalloch.

With EOD : A Tale of Dark Legacy The Great Old Ones have delivered on every level. It's a great album regardless of one's Lovecraftian proclivities, and even better for Lovecraft fans.

The Great Old Ones - Tekeli-li

By Ulla Roschat. Just think “At the Mountains of Madness” turned into sound and you have the Tekeli-li album! The Great Old Ones, the band name indicates it, chose H. P. Lovecraft’s fiction as a conceptual background for their musical work. They are a five piece band from Bordeaux/France and formed in 2011.

By Ulla Roschat.

Artwork by Jeff Grimal

Just think “At the Mountains of Madness” turned into sound and you have the Tekeli-li album! The Great Old Ones, the band name indicates it, chose H. P. Lovecraft’s fiction as a conceptual background for their musical work. They are a five piece band from Bordeaux/France and formed in 2011.Tekeli-li is their second album following up their debut Al Azif (2012).

The album contains six tracks of which five are genuine songs, the first one is a short introduction with spoken words that leads you directly into a narrative situation and lets you know the following is meant to be a cohesive entity with an underlying concept, namely Lovecraft’s novella “At the Mountains of Madness”, plus it sets a mood of eeriness that won’t leave you throughout the entire album.

Stylistically The Great Old Ones blend black and post metal into dense heavy soundscapes to create atmospheres that perfectly fit the icy Antarctic wastes and the spine-tingling horror of encountering ancient alien species with all its implications of fear, confusion and insanity, exhaustion and sorrow.


There’s a raw, bleak black metal feel throughout, even in the more ambient moments, with stormy churning uproaring riffs and varying dynamics providing a constant presence of a piercing cold and a constant motion and shifting of atmospheres which is even enhanced by a myriad of subtler less spectacular (but thanks to a quality production effective) changes and contradicting, dissonant melodies and rhythms that add a slight but creepy sense of chaos and insanity.

Spoken word parts and acoustic moments are quite rare, but more frequent towards the end of the album in the last and longest track (17:50 min.) "Behind the Mountains" and belong to the the well-conceived structure of the album’s dramatic composition. They add depth and texture and give room for the huge climaxes.

With Tekeli-li The Great Old Ones created a brilliant sonic interpretation of Lovecraft’s “At the Mountains of Madness”. It’s a loving dedication and credit to the author. And so is the album artwork by band member Jeff Grimal (guitar/vocals). He totally catches what makes Tekeli-li unique and distinguishable: the constant swirling motion, the breathtaking flow of exciting events tamed, by a multi-layered and tight structure.

The Great Old Ones - Tekeli​-​li

By Zamaan Raza. H. P. Lovecraft carved out a niche in horror fiction with his short stories on ancient cosmic terrors. The Great Old Ones, a black metal band from Bordeaux, tap into his Cthulhu mythos with supreme assurance. Their expansive, textured sound evokes a sense of astral majesty, in a stark contrast with the “other” Lovecraft-inspired band, Portal

By Zamaan Raza.

Artwork by Jeff Grimal

H. P. Lovecraft carved out a niche in horror fiction with his short stories on ancient cosmic terrors. The Great Old Ones, a black metal band from Bordeaux, tap into his Cthulhu mythos with supreme assurance. Their expansive, textured sound evokes a sense of astral majesty, in a stark contrast with the “other” Lovecraft-inspired band, Portal, whose claustrophobic pummelling elicits unease, a creeping dread.

Their second album, Tekeli-li is based on the short story “At the Mountains of Madness,” in which an antarctic expedition discovers an ancient derelict city, apparently once occupied by monstrous visitors from beyond the stars, only to awaken something that had lain dormant for aeons. The Great Old Ones capture a recurring theme in Lovecraft’s short stories, forbidden knowledge - men of science who learn things that are inconceivable to the human mind in form and scale, resulting in remorse and insanity respectively.

Photo by Jo T.

Their excellent debut Al-Azif was relatively lo-fi, and owed almost as much to shoegaze as it did to black metal. Tekeli-li is harsher and much more varied; the third track, “The Elder Things,” for example, is busy in a progressive kind of way, without ever feeling contrived or distracting; the best comparison I can think of is Cormorant’s debut album. “Antarctica” starts with a sludgy, bottom-heavy riff that recalls Celestial-era Isis, seguing into an atonal bees-in-a-bucket type affair that could be Blut Aus Nord. It’s only in the third minute that they begine to sound like themselves, but this time they pack more of a punch, with the drums and bass much higher in the mix. The final two tracks, “The Ascend” and “Behind the Mountains” are closest to being straightforward black metal, but at no point does it feel like the band is running out of ideas.

It is difficult for high-concept bands to maintain their central conceit over more than one album without stagnating (although consistency of style is not necessarily a bad thing --- see Fall of Efrafa). In Tekeli-li, The Great Old Ones have crafted a worthy successor to Al-Azif with a much richer palette.

The Great Old Ones - Al Azif

The Great Old Ones' new album Al Azif has just been released on their Bandcamp! This is french black metal heavily inspired by HP Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. The is also french black metal that conjures atmospheric visions of dread.

Artwork by Jeff Grimal

The Great Old Ones' new album Al Azif has just been released on their Bandcamp! This is french black metal heavily inspired by HP Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. The is also french black metal that conjures atmospheric visions of dread. Throughout six epic tracks you can hear a post-metal sensibility at work in the way they twist and turn, and mixes the dread with passages of stark beauty. A sentiment mirrored in this quote from the Lurker's Path review:

Equal parts aggressive and serene – The Great Old Ones manage to summon feelings of the sublime and majesty, terror and fear, as well as hate and belligerence.

For more info on The Great Old Ones, check their website.