Farewell

One alternative title I had concocted for this post was Autumns, Storms, and Other Platitudes. I decided not to use it, even though I thought the first half was at least a little bit clever. Kozhamzer ^[1] is a (pretty rare, atmittedly) Breton word meaning ‘autumn’ or ‘storm / bad weather’, which can be associated so easily to the seasonal themes of black metal. With and other Platitudes, however, I wasn’t sure whether I was being self-deprecating or snobbish, or both: is Kozhamzer your dime-in-a-dozen generic black metal? Is black metal some hodge-podge of vague references to end-of-year gloominess? Am I thinking too hard about what I want Kozhamzer to be in the grand scheme of black metal things?

On July 11^th, 2026, I released my debut EP.

Or, at least, that’s what I’d have you believe. Before I took on this moniker, I spent around five years (five years!) planning and creating an album that I would release to the public under the name Kimiad ^[2]:

My God, this was an ambitious project. I hand-stitched the cover art for, I believe, half a year! The five pieces of bread and the halved fish: Biblical references, yes, but more specifically related to the Breton saint Kaourintin of Quimper (Fr. Saint Corentin), who according to legend fed himself and a starving hunter by splitting a fish and throwing both halves into a pool, upon which the halves turn into two separate animals. The last song on the album, Corentin, refers to that story.

And there’s more world-building: Black Ore ends with a sample from Claude Cabrol’s film adaptation of Le cheval d’orgueil (novel by Pêr-Jakez Helias), where Corentin (not the saint) knocks on his cousin’s door, scared beyond belief, having heard Death’s chariot coming to take him. The melody finishing off that song is reintroduced, to close the album, as the chorus of Corentin.

As if that wasn’t enough, I saddled myself with the challenge of composing a mighty and sweeping piece around the sixty-one-verse Gwerz Kêr-Is (Eng. Lament of the City of Ys), where saint Corentin is identified as the hermit guiding king Gradlon. You’ll identify influences from symphonic metal, Celtic metal, American Football-esque midwest emo, progressive rock, dare I say black metal—by Jove, even djent!—and all of that as a twenty-five-minute epic on the very first track. I wanted it to be a massive statement piece to prove that I could create something enormous, and grandiose, and eclectic.

Kaourintin was supposed to be the first of seven concept albums based around the legends of Breton saints: still to come would have been Pol of Saint-Pol-de-Léon, Tudwal of Tréguier, Brioc of Saint-Brieuc, Malo of Saint-Malo, Samson of Dol, and Patern of Vannes. All of these should have had a distinct musical character, as well as equally intricate webs of intertextuality.

Yet, I consider this a failure of an album, and I abandoned Kimiad.

I can’t listen to Kaourintin. It feels too construed, too fake, too planned. I think you can hear it, too. Kaourintin tries to sound like ten different bands at the same time, never quite settling on a single style (or quality) of production. There is no Kimiad ‘sound’. Kaourintin is hopelessly trying to stitch together stories that I haven’t experienced, or felt myself, or thought about in great detail. Kaourintin is a gaudy, ornate cup filled with nothing. Kaourintin is me struggling to find a voice; it is me jumping up and down hoping to be noticed for being clever, and ambitious, and well-read, and… et cetera. It’s me at my most insecure.

On July 11^th, I released my debut EP.

I wrote and recorded the second song, Katell & Florence, and painted the album cover, that same day. The EP is imperfect. It’s quiet, because I did not master the tracks. There’s no overarching theme except what was on my mind: two beautiful 19^th-century poems by the hand of Ondine Valmore, a sickly young woman, who wrote about the birds and the trees that she could only see from her window. Getting to choose three new names for myself, breaking free from my family’s male lineage in more than one way. Feeling natural in a world that increasingly sees me as unnatural; getting to finally feel whole, and hopeful.

Kozhamzer is Breton for ‘autumn’: leaves fall from trees and land where they may. They’re swept up by the wind and become something else, somewhere else, when they melt into the earth. Kozhamzer is Breton for ‘storm’: when it storms, I’m inside, with my cat, drinking oat milk hot cocoa, with my vanilla-scented candles lit, and I draw her sleeping.

Looking back, Kaourintin might have been my predecessor’s last-ditch attempt at creating an identity for himself, and failing. He had to go through this to let me create Kozhamzer.

Kimiad is Breton for ‘farewell’.

[1]: Pronounced kohz (like Joes) - um (like sum) - zair (like air, but with the good old French r). Or, more precisely, [koːzˈɑ̃m.zɛʁ].

[2]: Pronounced key - myah’d, i.e. [ˈki.mjad].