Narrow Terence

Narrow Terence is a French band from Rognes, in the Bouches-du-Rhône region, founded in 2004 by brothers Antoine and Nicolas Puaux.

The band’s name combines the word Narrow — a reference to the Chokebore song of the same name from the album A Taste for Bitters — with the first name Terence. For the founders, Terence was one of the most important people they met in shaping their future as musicians: a tall, calm and charismatic figure with a Nordic look and a deep interest in all kinds of music. He died shortly after they met him.

Together, the two words created the fictional character “Narrow Terence” — literally “Terence the Narrow” — who became, in the band’s own words, a kind of muse, icon and imaginary narrator for their songs.

Following a violent incident backstage at a Paris concert venue, Antoine and Nicolas Puaux had to temporarily put the Narrow Terence project on hold and complete a period of community service. They later turned that experience into creative material, which partly explains the title of the album Violence With Benefits: the idea of transforming punishment and hardship into renewed artistic inspiration.

The turquoise album cover features the damaged face of Saint Charles Borromeo. With his remaining eye, he seems to look with compassion on the person who has committed the fault, as if hoping for his return to a more virtuous path. Known for reforming both the Church and sacred music, and for promoting greater discipline and a form of choral polyphony in which music served the meaning of the text, Saint Charles Borromeo becomes here the ironic figurehead of a secular album.

Although secular, the album is strongly marked by religious imagery. This is partly due to the circumstances in which it was created, which shaped its themes, and partly because it was recorded in a Baroque chapel.

Recorded live in less than 48 hours, the album has a powerful sense of scale and a striking immediacy. It is significantly less metal-oriented than its predecessor, but it follows the same compositional approach: sophisticated, orchestral songwriting in which an expressive instrumental palette interacts with the rough, distinctive vocals of a mysterious central character.

The album also creates an acoustic echo of Narco Corridos through a reinterpretation of Wet Dead Horses. The distorted guitars and screamed vocals of the original are stripped away, giving way to a more epic and melodic version with a stronger narrative dimension.