The man we thought invincible, unkillable and probably already sweating Satan, Guy Landry of Les Flokons Givrés, has hopefully finally found his Walhalla in early 2025.
He joins Bertrand Boisvert and Peter Boucher, his first Flokons Givrés acolytes, one of whom passed away in 2015 and the other in 2005. I’m not sure if they’re in the big orchestra in the sky, but if they are, it’s bound to stir things up a bit.
A legendary Montreal band from the late ’80s/early ’90s, Les Flokons Givrés were “difficult” from the start, with the larger-than-life personalities of Guy and Bertrand, who didn’t give a damn about the very concept of a musical group, using it as a vehicle to spit out all the evil they thought of the universe and fight their own demons.
Les Flokons Givrés was never an ordinary show, and there was a good chance that it was going to suck. Thanks to a legendary demo released in 1989, there was a demand and the band took advantage of it…to fuck up the momentum. We’ve lost count of the number of shows that ended in chaos, with amps farting, Guy playing non-stop, Bertrand hilarious/angry/indifferent and Banchon leaving, out of patience.
But when the magic happens, it’s communion, the audience screams out the lyrics, it revs up and the guitar saws us in half. This wasn’t the kind of thing that could happen at Foufounes, it had to be trashier, more minimal, more primal. It had to be trashy, minimal, primal. It was rare, it was stiff, but it had its effect.
The first demo, initially produced in small quantities and then double-copied thousands of times, made its way across Quebec and even Europe, by word-of-mouth alone. It established Les Flokons Givrés as a cult band, and in a way influenced a generation of French-speaking Quebec punks with their punk-metal closer to Discharge than to Bérurier Noir.
Active mainly between 1989 and 1992, Les Flokons Givrés embody the perfect crossover between punk, metal and hardcore, with a natural, flowing Québécois phrasing. If anthems like Plus rien à boire and Vedge à l’os give the impression that things aren’t flying high, L’escargot and Un skin c’t’un skin muddy the waters, revealing an intelligence and lucidity that, at the very least, pique our interest.
And despite the deliberately lo-fi means, musically, it still stands out from what was being listened to in the niche at the time. Not in virtuosity, but in intention, the internalization of influences and the unique version of them rendered by Les Flokons Givrés. They live what they say, and it shows in the music too.
It’s almost a shame that their biggest “hit” is a cover of Peter and the test tube babies’ Banned from the pubs, the famous Barré des foufs, but it’s so much in keeping with the idea of the Flokons, even more so when you know them personally, that the song has ended up belonging completely to them and being the first memory evoked by the trio.
Far from being Vedge to the bone, Les Flokons Givrés, despite their intrinsic nihilism, had a sense of formula, with evocative titles, something to say and the eloquence to express it. The rest of the band’s stories have fueled their legends, but basically, their repertoire stands on its own.
It was Guy and Bertrand’s strong personalities that forged this repertoire and the band’s trajectory, for better or for worse. Each continued to challenge reality after the Flokons imploded, in their own unique way, and are the subjects of many stories that can be told by the fireside at the end of a mush trip, with just enough distance to laugh and revive memories of the famous Flokons Givrés.
Otherwise, there’s still a “Best of” CD released in the early 2000s and a vinyl version released in 2011, with a very small print run. There’s also this tribute, released in 2024: https://studio1222.bandcamp.com/album/vedgis-revedgis-flokonum
There’s also this on youtube, while it lasts. You can also find most of the songs in audio only. For the time being.
