Incandescence still burns bright.
Four years after their last collaboration, Philippe Boucher (guitar/drums/bass, Beyond Creation, Chthe’ilist, ex-First Fragment) and Louis-Paul Gauvreau (vocals, ex-The Unconscious Mind) bring us the band’s fifth album, Hors temps, via Profound Lore Records.
The duo is accompanied on stage by Maxime Legault (guitar, Aeternam, ex-Valfreya), Simon Gauvreau (bass, ex-The Unconscious Mind) and Mathieu Meunier (guitar).
The album opens with Affranchissement, a first composition that starts off rather mysterious but quickly changes atmosphere to develop icy and intoxicating Old School tones before welcoming Louis-Paul‘s expressive screams, adding a human touch to this first wave of tortured sound. There is a slower but equally captivating passage thanks to the vocals, then L’Enfer existe sets the duo alight, naturally intensifying its riffs with a catchy, jerky rhythm, but also transcendent passages. The sound gradually fades away, then Confluence takes up the torch and reveals a rather different approach, with more contrast between epic moments and more stripped-down elements that give it a rawer and more dissonant feel. The finale literally crashes into our ears, joining Le Vide, which continues in this devastating direction, once again playing on both extremes, even adding some heavy doom influences during the slow passages, but Sécheresse takes over, burying us in turn under its thick layers of darkness, while still allowing us to breathe a few times. The screams haunt the dark waves that tear at our minds, but they come to an end fairly quickly, leaving Marasme to develop much brighter but equally furious tones that plunge us back into this virulent tornado. The track has a more complex touch in its dissonant harmonics, but also more macabre screams before venturing into melancholy in the leads, then into an oppressive final that gives way to Inexorable détérioration, which starts off with a bang. While the rhythm is relatively sustained, we are also drawn in by the vocalist’s distress, more expressive than ever, who draws us into his downfall and, consequently, the final riffs that fade away in favor of majestic keyboards.
Incandescence‘s previous album had already won me over, but as good as it was, Hors temps clearly shows the band’s progress! The two musicians are at the peak of their collaboration, allowing them to create memorable tracks.
95/100