Night falls for Sordide.
Three years after their previous production, Nemri (drums/vocals, Iffernet, Mälemort) and Nehluj (guitar/vocals, Ataraxie, Void Paradigm), recently joined by Nebersth (bass/vocals), continue their collaboration with Les Acteurs de l’Ombre Productions to unveil Ainsi finit le jour, their fifth album.
Des feux plus forts opens with feedback noises that lead us into furious dissonance, quickly complemented by raw vocal parts, creating a veritable well of macabre oppression. The rhythm eventually slows down, reinforcing the ominous mood before flaring up again to borrow from Punk on Nos cendres et nos rales, an energetic composition whose vindictive French vocals confirm its sudden energy. The musicians take advantage of the track’s length to vary the speed of their playing, shifting from oppressive lancinance to the vigor of their debut, before hypnotizing us with Le cambouis et le carmin and its weighing patterns anchored in a kind of melancholic lethargy. The composition reminds me of that sticky dark Old School Black Metal, even on the final acceleration that leads to Sous vivre, where apathy returns in full force beneath the trio’s cries of despair, eventually returning to more Black’n’Roll accents with Banlieues rouges. The sound remains more playful, while distilling a rather pessimistic discourse, but it becomes more morbid again with the gloomy La poesie du caniveau, which begins with this virulent savagery, but gradually becomes denser and slower. We move on to the eponymous Ainsi finit le jour, which is propelled at full speed into an uncontrollable race that ends again in a sinister dance, before La beauté du desastre freezes our blood with its opening riffs. I sense a relatively decadent touch here, which fits in perfectly with the track’s name, but the chaotic atmosphere of the piece makes it strange, as does the minimalist, ominous break with bass and drums, later joined by the guitar before a final surge that lets itself die before arriving at Tout est a la mort, the final composition, which cultivates this ambient gloom before letting DSBM influences corrupt the vocal parts until the final anguish.
Sordide expresses its own vision of Black Metal in Ainsi finit le jour, a more chaotic and pessimistic approach than before. The tracks are all filled with a certain oppression, letting slowness crush us little by little.
80/100
