With their first album in eight years, French black-metal battalion Seth has created a sequel to their 1998 debut, Les blessures de l'âme. Translated literally as ‘The Bite of Christ,’ La morsure du Christ is a concept album revolving around the April 2019 burning of the Notre-Dame de Paris, with lyrics written in the poetic meter of French alexandrine. “We wanted to make the flame of ’90s French black metal alive again,” Seth vocalist Saint Vincent tells Apple Music. “And of course the iconography of black metal is burning churches. We felt the blaze of Notre-Dame de Paris was like a symbol of the death of Christianity.” Below, he elaborates on each track. “La Morsure du Christ” “Our first album is called Les blessures de l'âme, which literally means ‘The Wounds of the Soul.’ But phonetically, you can hear it as ‘The Wounds of the Blade’ as well. Because this album is a sequel, I wanted to do the same. Phonetically, ‘La Morsure du Christ’ can be heard as ‘The Certain Death of Christ.’ And so the track is an allegory of the death of Christ. ‘The bite’ is making a parallel with the idea of a vampire: Christ didn’t wake up because there was a resurrection but because he was bitten by a vampire. It’s a bit of fantasy showing that Christianity has been supplanted. There is no savior coming.” “Métal Noir” “The title of course means ‘Black Metal,’ and again this is a sequel to the spirit of the first album, the spirit of ’90s black metal that we lived. Not just the excitement when you are 20 years old and discovering black metal, but looking back 20 years later, understanding the very essence and living it again.” “Sacrifice de Sang” “Lyrically, this is a poetic but gruesome and dark vision of a blood sacrifice. Like all the songs, the lyrics are written in French alexandrine, a very strict way of old classical poetry. But it goes much deeper than telling the story of a sacrifice, because it’s an assembly of secret cults, and the goal is to gather power through the blood of the young. I’m not saying you have to kill young people to get power, of course, but this is a fantasy that many people have: that people of power are gathering secretly and killing young people to get more power.” “Ex-Cathédrale” “This is the demise of Notre-Dame, as seen on the album cover. In this poetic language, I wanted to describe the fire—not just watching the flames but describing the meaning for Paris and for the world. Each flame is like a demon saying, ‘Your time is over.’ The legions of hell are coming to destroy the cathedral. When the fire happened, they put some lights on the Eiffel Tower—a symbol of the industrial world and the new world that was arriving in the 1900s—while the cathedral was dying in the blaze. So you have the end of an era and the beginning of a new one.” “Hymne au Vampire (Acte III)” “‘The Hymn of the Vampire.’ Why Act III? Because, once again, it is supposed to be the sequel to Les blessures de l'âme, which has the first two acts. On that album, you have a vampire who is really fiery, young, full of energy and wanting to conquer the world. In Act III, much time has passed. Like in some Anne Rice books, the vampire is alone and feels the tragedy of being a vampire. All his passions have disappeared and he is trapped in the past, even if he is still alive. This is what he reflects on as he strolls through the blackened ruins of Notre-Dame.” “Les Océans du Vide” “‘Oceans of the Void.’ For this, I got inspired by Baudelaire and his poem ‘Le Voyage.’ It was telling about a guy who is traveling overseas to live new passions, but at the end, everything is the same everywhere. It’s an ocean of boredom, as he said. And so at the end, he is going to death because he wants to experience new shores. So I wrote lyrics about getting ready to die, where you leave everything behind and go on a trip where you are meeting all your fears—a trip on the Styx with Charon.” Le Triomphe de Lucifer “‘Lucifer’s Triumph.’ Once again, I got inspired by Baudelaire and his poem ‘Les Litanies de Satan.’ His poem is an invocation of Lucifer by somebody who feels really misanthropic and lonely: ‘Oh Satan, take pity of my misery. Give me strength and take care of me.’ In the song, it’s the story of Lucifer coming from outer space, where he stole the fire of the forbidden gods and brings it back to humanity, saying, ‘Take this fire. I give you science. I give you freedom.’ There is a parallel with the fire of Notre-Dame—the fire is destroying the old world, and thanks to this, we are totally free.”