Queen(Ares) returns with questions.
For this new album, called Choices, Maxime Mouquet (bass/vocals, Sylvaine), Charly Millioz (bass VI/vocals, Big Bernie), Nicolas Tarridec (drums, The Lumberjack Feedback), and Alex Renaux (guitar, General Lee, Junon) have signed with Source Atone Records.
We start with Choices, the eponymous track that serves as an introduction and presents us with very bright keyboards that suddenly burst into flames when For Rice & Flowers kicks in, offering a virulent and abrasive but quite changeable sound, shifting from a torrent with Post-Hardcore roots to more ethereal passages. The vocals also shift from visceral screams to much softer sung words or even more vulnerable moments before moving on to What If The Souls Remains’ haunting melodies, which naturally takes over and offers intoxicating and exotic touches, but also an interesting progression to the saturation we were all waiting for. The track is much shorter, but still takes the time to build its harmonics before joining An Upward Trail and its more haunting tones, whether in the violent parts or the much softer, albeit slightly threatening, ones. The mix remains coherent and volatile while anchoring itself in a Post-Rock base that the band knows how to ignite at will to emphasize its violence, then the bellicose tones return with Black Corridors, which hits us without warning. Everything in this track is more oppressive, more aggressive, darker, but the vocals are still very expressive within these heavy riffs, and the contrast with Exiles is all the more surprising, even though the introduction gives way to heavier saturation. The track remains fairly gentle at first despite the openly raw elements, then the heaviness and virulence take over at the end, then the band ventures into more desolate lands on Darker Than Before, the last very long track that shifts from DSBM to soaring Prog with impressive naturalness, leading us with disconcerting ease through all its dark waves, before abandoning us on the last one where keyboards reign supreme.
Queen(Ares) is part of a wave of bands with multiple but very coherent influences that exude a powerful personality. If Choices has a message to convey, we mustn’t forget its soaring riffs that carry our minds light years away from our bodies.
90/100
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