Celeste gets out of darkness for its sixth album.
With Assassine(s), released at the beginning of 2022 at Nuclear Blast, Johan Girardeau (vocals/bass), Guillaume Rieth (guitar), Antoine Royer (drums) and Sébastien Ducotte (guitar) ended the silence lasting since summer 2018, when they released their last EP.
The band immediately buries us into its dark dissonance with Des torrents de coups, the first track, the first song, offering a weighing technicality into their riffs, melted to visceral sounds on vocals. The fact they use french will surprise the unenlightened, but heaviness and blackness perfectly integrate it to the melting, just like the weighing and energetic De tes yeux bleus perlés. Sludge haunting tones join heady Black Metal tones on this hypnotic and jerky song, creating some dark and melancholic coldness, while Nonchalantes de beauté unveils some quite appeasing slowness. Very steady, the composition counts a lot on airy and mesmerizing pessimistic howlings, just like the majestic Draguée tout au fond. Very heavy, the composition turns out to be a quickly hooking one, while taking advantage of powerful spurts to create a rhythm on this black veil, with which the band covers us while striking precisely. The contrast between dirty sound and perfect mix follows over (A) and its softness which slowly progresses into this desolated landscape. The instrumental composition is also very haunting, allowing a short break because howlings will be back into the explosive Il a tant rêvé d’elles and its aggressive jerks. We also have some airy leads to soften the raw rage, creating an as imprevisible as effective contrast, while Elle se répète froidement makes us sink into the most pessimistic tones the band can create. Melancholy teams up with blackness, creating a haunting and seizing rhythmic which relentlessly slips into our mind, then Le coeur noir charbon sweeps us away with its impressive rhythmic, helped by Katsuta (Heaven In Her Arms). The double-kick steamroller lets place to a more weighing pattern, spawning Post-Metal influences, then Emily Marks’ soft female vocals joins the abrasive sound, which will explode one last time before it fades into the void.
As a light at the end of the tunnel, Celeste’s universe makes us travel into raw blackness. Assassine(s) is an as majestic as cruel album, which permanently draws on a seizing and oppressive contrast, making it one of this years’ essential one.
95/100