Nuit d’Encre is back.
After a first album in 2020, Franswa Felt (vocals/all instruments) cooperated with Eric Dunnet (drums) to release De L’Autre Côté, his second album, mixed by Etienne Sarthou (Karras, Freitot, ex-aQme), at Bitume.
The album starts with a siren on Mille Lieux Hostiles, a heavy and mysterious composition which skillfully mixes cold riffs with a heavy mix and Doom/Sludge influences with airy leads and strange samples before the final alarm lets L’être Morte reveal haunting and majestic sounds. Prog influences give relief to this hazy and tortured instrumental which will fade away before L’enfant Éphémère comes to bewitch us with its hypnotic softness followed by groovy riffs. The two facets blend together to create a contrasted sound, then Industrial roots resurface on De L’autre Côté to give the Post Metal influences a very raw and jerky sound. Dissonant leads are always present to feed its oppression, but we still find some softer melodies before Les Sangs Abris offers us its strikes to which the other instruments gradually come to anchor. The slow and heady riffs guide us to À Travers Les Ombres, a composition which takes the same elements up before covering them with a heavy rhythmic and soaring harmonics before ending, and Faim D’un Rêve offers us its ghostly melodies sometimes strengthened by a thick rhythmic. Incertain Jour closes the album with a Doom-cold metallic sounding carried by an instrumental basis which becomes more and more luminous and soothing, recreating this contrast with the previous oppression.
Whether the music of Nuit d’Encre is heavy and cold, letting airy and dissonant leads answer to a crushing and metallic rhythmic, we will also notice the pervasive wordplays on the tracks of De L’Autre Côté which gives it a certain soul.
80/100
