Death metal from France, I must admit that France is not the fist country that comes in my mind when I think about brutal death metal. Yyrkoon exists since 1995 and has released three albums before ‘Unhealthy Opera’. Since their previous album ‘Occult Medicine’ their style has move a bit more towards the more thrash orientated death metal.

The music on ‘Unhealthy Opera’ is brutal, aggressive and melodic at the same time. This is absolute top class death metal. High-speed double bass hammering comes hand in hand with powerful twin solos. Yyrkoon is best described as a mixture between “Death” and “Morbid Angel” with a very rich heavy metal back ground. The lead vocals from singer/guitarist Stephane are exactly what this album needs, very aggressive without loosing himself into a lot of screaming instead of grunting.

The songs are mostly played at a high level of speed but there is enough room for some threatening mid-tempo thunder. This makes the album very pleasant to listen to without getting bored.

According to the band “Unhealthy Opera” is an album conceived through the Lovecraftian’s Cthulhu mythos and is more particularly about the fantastic/horror world in the sea’s Abbys and wild shores…the great Cthulhu and the old ones... My promo does not include the lyrics so I can’t tell anything about whether it is a concept album or not, but I surely do think so.
This is absolutely a must-have for fans of “Death” and “Morbid Angel”. Yyrkoon has proved me there is more in France than wine and baguettes with cheese.