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Betty Bonifassi and Jean-Phi Goncalves knew each other for five years before the one-hour encounter that changed their careers. One day last year they went into a studio to record something that “wasn't even a song,” as Goncalves puts it, and they came out with a Beast.

Bonifassi and Goncalves are the two halves of Beast, which stands an excellent chance of being the next big success story from the Montreal music scene. The duo's self-titled debut album was released in 22 countries on iTunes before its Canadian CD launch on Pheromone/Universal earlier this month, and was picked up by Verve Forecast in the United States and Island Records in Britain before the band had played a single show outside Canada.

Bonifassi is the better-known of the two: She sang on the soundtrack to The Triplets of Belleville (and at the Academy Awards when the theme song took an Oscar nomination in 2004), and on a widely heard album by Montreal's DJ Champion, including a single (No Heaven) that rocked the Juno Awards broadcast last year. Goncalves has drummed and written for several top Quebec musicians, including Daniel Bélanger, Jean-Pierre Ferland and Plaster, Goncalves's own electro-dance trio.

Beast was born by accident, after Goncalves asked Bonifassi to add some vocals to a track he was working on. She arrived with a handful of lyrics and no expectations. Within an hour, the song fragment had mushroomed into the first draft of a tough, wide-screen epic about the resilience of human habit in the face of all disasters. The album version, which is called Devil, has the heavy tread of a rock-inflected dance, the punch of a down-tempo rap number, and the melodic charm of a cabaret on the outskirts of hell.

“The mood was very dark,” says Bonifassi. “And that was right for me. It was a very dark period in my life,” though she declines to say why. “We started to follow that song, to see where it would take us.”

She knew from the start that the destination would not be familiar. She had expected to sing for Goncalves, and she does sing in Devil's chorus, but the verses are done in a hard, spoken-word delivery that Bonifassi had never tried before.

“Jean-Phi pushed me on that. I'm a singer, not a rapper. I had my text, and he just said, ‘Go.' I have an impact in talking, or slamming,” she says, using the English word that, in France, refers to a declamation with music that is more like dub poetry than rap. “For me, that was really breaking boundaries.”

Beast's music moves with the recombinant energy of a fast-moving virus, through a wide but coherent variety of styles. Blues, funk and old-time gospel all make an appearance, along with big-booted guitar melodies that recall the soundtracks of Ennio Morricone, and sweetly sinister constructions like those in the film music of Danny Elfman (to name two of Beast's favourite composers). Goncalves's production claims a big aural space, with fat bass-lines often grinding far below a recurrent high vocal sound (sometimes synthetic, sometimes real) that could stand for the promise of hope in a bleak situation, or the mockery of remote angels.

“It's very organic and electronic at the same time,” says Goncalves. However synthetic his instrumental choices, they're always grounded by Bonifassi's powerful, earthy singing. This is probably the first record to show the full tonal range of her astounding voice, from the brassy bray heard in Ashtray (against a soft background of mandolins) to the soothing maternal sound in the chorus of Dark Eyes.

The first three songs were written quickly, and then the hard work began, and continued for 11 months. Beast called in Canadian chanteuse and songwriter Simon Wilcox to help with the lyrics, and to coach Bonifassi in her English slamming.

Both Bonifassi and Goncalves were born in France, and arrived separately in Montreal one month apart in 1997. His family is Portuguese, and her parents are Italian and Yugoslavian, so they have each had a double history of emigration.

“I would never have done the Triplets or Champion or Beast in France,” says Bonifassi. “They would never have let me. The music industry there is very closed.”

The decision to record in English was an easy one, and not entirely driven by the language's higher marketability. Goncalves says he needed the strong rhythmic character of English to make this record what it is. The smoother, less emphatic phrasing of French would not have worked.

They did their first tour together this fall, playing opening sets for the Vancouver dance-punk band, You Say Party! We Say Die! They're just now starting to figure out what a full Beast show should look like, as they prepare for a Quebec tour in the New Year, some industry showcases in a few countries where the band has signed but not played, and a wider touring schedule that should begin in the fall of 2009.

“The album was the script, now we're shooting the movie,” says Bonifassi. “You have to put life into the script, and that's what we do in the shows.”

Beast's Toronto show at the Mod Club has been postponed till the New Year.