“This is a raw black metal album. And a good one at that.”
A man can be happy with but a handful of things: good coffee, some good readings, a good dog or a psycho of a cat, and French raw black metal. At the end of the day, simple men require simple things. Not more, not less. Enter French band Consolatio, and the last part will have been taken care of.
Released in December 2025, Ex Nihilo is the band’s debut record. We do not have a clue who the members of the band are, or if it is just one guy. Or girl. Or if it is an alien, for that matter. Does that matter? Not for us, it does not. We usually pay attention to the message, not to the messenger, so that is that. And the overall message is good, even if it brings nothing new to the table. Notwithstanding, it is hard to ask for a good black metal album in 2026, let alone one that innovates the genre somehow.
While some might throw Consolatio in the DSBM basket, it would be a lackadaisical mistake to assume that, as first track “Sanctorum” so clearly shows. This is not DSBM, no sir, although we do get faint references to it. What we find in the opening track are heavy doses of early Funeral Mist and early Mayhem, so wild and primitive it is, even if it evolves into something resembling DSBM, only to return soon enough to that early savagery. Yes, there are moments here and there that might lead into a more mellow and profound strain of black metal, like what the aptly titled next song “In Despair” shows, but overall this is a raw black metal album. And a good one at that. Everything is on point with the record, be it the chaotic but good production, the free spirit of the genre, or the solid musicianship behind it.
“Endless Death”, “Ignorance”, and “Alienation” all fit in the Funeral Mist/Mayhem bracket, and there is nothing wrong with that. You can feel a cold, dark honesty about Ex Nihilo. It is not like someone woke up one day and decided to write a black metal album for the sake of it. One would see a flop like that from miles away, as it is impossible to create a good black metal album if you do not know what you are doing, much more so than in any other metal subgenre there is. This is the real deal, and the more we listen to it, the more we hope we will know who is behind it. Not to quench our curiosity, but rather to thank whoever is in charge.
Final track “Lugubre” is a march towards eternal fire, one that starts slow, but then charges against everything holy, much like what you can hear in “Anti-Flesh Nimbus”, the last track of Funeral Mist’s Maranatha. The comparison throughout the whole album is obvious, but again, that is a good thing. Now Consolatio only need to do it with their own signature and mark, as Ex Nihilo is a hell of a start, but it is just the beginning, and we are sure that we will hear more and bigger things from this band in time.
