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FOURNIER
Demo 2026
Review by Craig Leahy
Alright, fuck, okay, howsit oi.
It’s been a while eh, have missed a few killer records that were sent over that I just couldn’t make the reviews work timing wise (Visions of Hell, Standover and Planet Hunter I swear I’m going to do something special for you guys), not gonna lie, I massively underestimated balancing how long these take with handling a toddler who insists on dancing to Misfits tracks with me each night, a dog who I think is scared of the Misfits and a wife who I swear to god only likes Michale Graves era Misfits, what the fuck did I marry into? I’ve never really had a good routine of posting these reviews, and while I don’t want to stop doing them, it kinda feels like I need to change up the format here a bit. I’ve been chatting to a few people about how Gone for Smokes can presented, be it short and long-form video or maybe podcast, who fuckin’ knows, does anyone even want that shit? The usual punishers that DM me after these reviews, let me know - How would you like this slop best be served to you, you little pig.
While we’re having a moment of vulnerability as well, I gotta come clean man, my daughter doesn’t ask to dance with me to Misfits every-night,
I make her dance with me to Misfits every-night.
Misfits fucking rule dude, and I’m tired of all the slander. This fucking country seems to have forgotten the Misfits are beyond GOATed man, fuck who cares if a few kids buy that skull shirt, look at the fuckin’ state of you, you’re wearing a god damn Devourment shirt to a job interview. I will spend the rest of my life reminding this fucking country that if you hate the Misfits, you hate the very fabric that makes us human, the fabric that is hearing Glenn Danzig sing about cumming spooky.
We have a monumentally special one to talk about today whanau, about 6 months back, I was given the upcoming Fournier demo, and after hearing it, I’ve been frothing to talk about it. Just a quickly before we get into it, just a little bit of lore about me, I have this ritual that I do almost daily, for like, years now. My daughter wakes up CRAZY early, every single day. And almost every morning I grab my phone, go to the old google machine and type the phrase ‘Bolt Thrower Longsleeve Bootleg Etsy’. Like religiously dude, for literally years. Obviously, these shirts are next to impossible to find because bootleggers are whipped down immediately and the band stopped selling merch years ago. Well man, a few weeks ago, I fucking caught one in the wild before it got taken down by merch cops. Immediately ordered a bangin’ IVth Crusade longsleeve before the shop got taken down. Small catch though, seller is in Indonesia, seems to have botted reviews, is REALLY fuckin’ bad with his DM’s and this is the picture provided for the actual product.
In any other situation, this is an immediate red flag and close the browser, but fuck man, you don’t understand how much I need this, in fact, you don’t understand how much Fournier need this, because that longsleeve is meant to be here the week I’m writing this, and if that shirt sucks, then I tell you what, the tone of this fuckin’ review is changing man. So fuckin’ listen here Fournier, if you are in fact an Indonesian drop shipper having a laugh at my god damn expense, I’m telling everyone this is a slam record and moving on with my life.
Indonesian scams aside, this is still a massively special review for me, if you like your death metal swampy, covered in grime and bumming a cig off you even after you said no a couple times, then you’ve probably seen a bunch of the hype surrounding the upcoming Fournier demo out May 22nd on Caligari Records.
Truly, I have such a sense of pride listening to this thing man, and a bunch of that comes from my pretty obvious bias about one of the members in this thing, but this demo also hits every metric I want from a death metal album. So let’s quickly talk about the boys and address my bias real quick too. Fournier is basically a NZ metal super group (and it makes me laugh that they most definitely cringe at me writing that), with every member having played in pretty much the who’s who of heavy music you’d never show your co-workers.
We have Daz Murray on guitar (who from what I understand did the majority of the songwriting also) Joe Wright on vocals and guitar, Jeff Lepper on bass and drums alongside Quintin Ellery who done sound design on the demo.
This lineup is wild to me for one reason, Joe Wright being on vocals and guitar. Joe has been in every conversation about best metal drummer in New Zealand for easily the last 10 years, the guy is a punishing freak on the drums. Couple years back he decided he wanted to learn guitar and one day just started putting in the work, this project is his first with his newly acquired skillset. This is also where we discuss my bias. I proper love this guy. Joe is like family to me, he’s my fuckin’ guy man. Joe is one of those dudes I’m SO stoked to introduce him to people, because he’s salt of the fuckin’ earth man, gets along with everyone, crazy knowledgeable about low key everything, and while so many people you meet around the NZ metal scene are so hyper focused on talking about their shit bands they don’t realise that they’ve aged into becoming the dreaded Valhalla Punisher, Joe treats every single person he meets with immediate respect and locks the fuck in on them, dude makes everyone feel like they’re the centre of his world for that fleeting moment. Like bro, come on, this is my fuckin’ guy. Joe going from an instrument where he’s not only proficient, but exceptional, to start from scratch on a new instrument with all the vulnerabilities that go along with that, that’s just fuckin’ awesome man. Don’t get me wrong, motherfucker can be a punisher too, just this morning after asking him to listen to Static Age by Misfits he replied to me with ‘um you know this exists right’ then just links a god damn Stooges album.
Proper punisher behaviour.
Alongside Joe you’ve got Daz and Jeff who while I don’t know personally, their contributions to some of the wildest bands in NZ metal are insane, these guys are truly monsters at their craft and any band they play in becomes a band you have to check out locally. And then we have Quintin, who is this whole other genre of undeniable personality and straight up charm, literally the first time I met Quintin I was at the Carcass gig down at Meow, was standing outside with my wife, dude walks out of the venue real slow straight towards me (keep in mind we have never met each other before at this point), he slowly changes focus and carefully looks down at my kicks, at which point he ACTUALLY LICKS HIS FUCKING LIPS, and confidently says ‘hey man what shoe size are you’, I look at my wife, look back and casually reply ’13 man why’s that?’, at which point these actual words come effortlessly out of his mouth ‘oh damn, nah I just thought I was going to have to roll you for those’ then walks off, hahaha, the fuck? Not gonna lie, that’s some king shit. And in his defence, they were olive Jordan 4’s, just killer damn sneakers man, I wouldn’t have blamed him.
Carcass were playing mostly Heartwork and Surgical Steel as well, that would driven even the most office worker guy among us right out the door to roll a cunt for his shoes. I’ve met Quintin a couple times since that night. Dude is hilarious, charismatic, and his contributions on this demo are outstanding.
Okay, the actual tunes, I’ve spent a few months with this release so far and I gotta say,
This demo straight up sounds like it fuckin’ hates me man.
Fournier’s sound is truly oppressive man and seeing that it was literally recorded in a panel beaters after hours, it must have been oppressive to make. Right from the opening seconds of the first track ‘Cast Adrift’, we’re cornered and completely punished by the sound design of Quintin, a cavernous hellscape of harsh noise and distorted screaming, like this motherfucker was just licking his lips trying to roll the shoes right off of Satan’s feet designing this intro. Cast Adrift doesn’t waste a single note pandering to anyone, each riff has been callously chosen to make your day just that little bit worse. Completely void of hooks, with hooks seemingly replaced with a pure sense of dread, this thing doesn’t fuck around man.
Fournier have the ability to find grooves to push each composition forward without compromising on the isolating atmosphere, and when I say groove I mean grooves more reminiscent of Incantation’s ‘Onward to Golgotha’ as opposed to the two-step Maggot Stomp bands idea of groove (no hate, I’m a fan of a lot of Maggot Stomp works, go listen to Mutilation Barbecue’s ‘Amalgamations of Gore’ before you start calling me a poser) these grooves combined with the just fucking oozing sludge covered mix help elevate the overwhelming feeling of hopelessness in these compositions. Tracks like ‘Supreme Ornaments’ are the best representation of what I’m saying here, the hanging guitar in the intro does a hell of a job building an anxious atmosphere before the entire track bursts into something that wouldn’t be out of place on Timeghoul’s legendary ’Tumultuous Travelings’ demo.
Fournier never sound like they’re purposely doing the opposite of what the more modern, pristine or trendy death metal bands are doing, they sound like they’ve never put a single fuckin’ thought into it and I guarantee they haven’t. I don’t think they care about the reception to their work, I think that they’re just channelling their perception of what death metal should be - suffocating, nihilistic and oppressive. And while it is reminiscent of bands I’ve mentioned during this review, it never feels derivative, it always feels purposeful and hyper focused on killing you.
Joe sent me this demo last year, after my first listen I said to him that if it had dropped that year, it would have been number one on my album of the year list, and as of May, it’s number one on my 2026 list. This shit is a fuckin’ rark man, my only real complaint is that it’s only four tracks.
Every single time I get to the last track, ‘Angel with a Bullet’ it sends me straight back to YouTube looking for more projects channelling this approach to death metal, and don’t get me wrong, I know I've jabbed at the modern death metal sound and songwriting during a few different reviews, just let me be clear, my gripe isn’t against modern death metal as a whole, there’s a TONNE of incredible modern death metal bands doing just wild shit, the new Gutvoid springs to mind immediately, the new Hrob not far behind it, SO many bands are doing their own thing without feeling the need to pander to whatever is deemed cool at the moment, but god damn, can you just humour me for a second, I have a back in my day moment loading I can just feel it.
The cultural zeitgeist surrounding death metal is exhausting and has been for well over a decade. Somewhere along the line when talking about the hip cool new death metal bands, there became this agreed notion of what heaviness is, like everyone got together and decided on this one mix and guitar tone, that while heavy, completely lacks one crucial factor, it’s just not fuckin’ hard, at a certain point, these bands stopped being extreme, stopped sounding dangerous and honestly became the last thing a death metal band should be,
It became fuckin’ safe man.
It became a formula, something that if I chucked on a death metal release that some loser on Reddit was raving about, I almost knew exactly what it was going to sound like before the melodramatic midi intro is finished. This isn’t even just a clean mix thing, there’s NZ bands (Blindfolded and Led to the Woods come to mind) that have pristine production, but they’re pushing the genre forward in interesting ways that a band like that I would never consider to be ‘safe’. Blindfolded specifically just dropped the hardest record of their discog a couple months back.
Look, people should like what they like, that’s awesome, no hate from me - I’m not personally shitting on anyone that likes the over-produced musings of some fuckin' nerd in his gamer chair, creating content for his shit YouTube channel but I really feel like we need another name for the genre, because in no world should be looking for Fournier and accidentally listen to fuckin’ Fallujah (fuck Fallujah I don’t care), look man this could just be old man sour grapes shit, but there’s two genres I’m desperately trying to avoid ageing out of, death metal and hardcore. I spend WAY more time than I should trawling through demos looking for the goods when I really should be focusing on my family, but this shit is important to me man, I love this shit.
I’m CONSTANTLY called a hater when the topic of death metal comes up, but fuck you, I just want my death metal felt like physical labour to listen to, almost like you found some shit that you weren’t supposed to hear, like back when I was maybe 14 this one shitty little dork kid brought a burnt DVD of that 9/11 documentary ‘Loose Change’ to school and told me it was illegal to watch it, I chucked it in my bag and felt my heart racing I was so scared about being caught with it. I want that same feeling but it’s just the ugliest people you’ve ever seen playing the most jank shit you’ve ever made your wife listen to in the car. And look man not to blow too much smoke up Fournier’s ass, but I really feel like Fournier capture just fuckin’ everything I want in death metal in the big ’26. This shit is ungodly, this shit is not going to have your fuckin’ mum to tap her stupid foot along too because she’s too busy crying about how bad it sounds, THAT’S the shit I want, I want your mum to be REALLY fuckin’ sad.
Anyway, I’d put money on no member of Fournier owning a gamer chair or having a YouTube channel. But if Quintin wants to start a podcast on YouTube with me where we only review energy drinks, hit me up dawg.
Look, I stopped rating records ages ago because my opinion shouldn’t hold any weight, especially after my old man rant earlier, but come on, to me, this should be considered mandatory listening by any death metal fan in 2026. You know what, fuck it let’s do it, let’s rate this bitch, let me show my rating visually with what we in the industry call, a perfect fuckin' callback,
5/5 no fuckin’ notes.
Even if Fournier are an Indonesian drop-shipper, they're always welcome in this house. Just stay the fuck away from my shoerack.
Fournier’s demo is dropping this Friday (22nd May) and can be pre-ordered from the Caligari Bandcamp page HERE
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