Plèvre gives us the keys to the city.
For this debut album, Cité mouroir, Ophélie G. (vocals), Olivier M. (guitar/drums/backing vocals, More of the Same Old Days), Paul B-C. (guitar), and Olivier B. (bass) – all members of Once Upon the End have signed with Frozen Records.
The album opens with Tu dois croire au printemps, a short, melodious introduction tinged with a certain melancholy, followed by the violence and darkness of Décimées, the first track where we discover both Black Metal roots and a certain technicality in the patterns. On the vocal front, Ophélie’s screams are at times complemented by massive backing vocals, responding to the dissonance of the harmonics as the riffs regularly explode from all sides, holding our attention until a touch of lighter clean vocals answers the screams before moving on to Asbestose and its intense dissonance. The rhythm section also proves slower and denser, imposing an intoxicating sense of oppression as the singer resumes her haunting refrain, supported by shrill, heady harmonics that reinforce the track’s already deeply visceral quality, which spreads like an epidemic. The sound becomes even sharper, almost “Old School”, on Tord-boyaux, the next track, which ignites immediately, offering brief lulls as the vocalist gradually lets loose, drawing the riffs along in her wake as they become explosive once more. The chaotic Table rase immediately takes over, enveloping us in its ever-shifting musical madness for a lively and invigorating instrumental interlude before launching us into A corps perdu and its furious charge toward ever-greater darkness and hazy patterns paired with expressive vocal parts. The lead guitar is just as plaintive as the vocalist is intense, but the track is forced to slow down for a more breathable finale before moving on to 3955 kHz, a track with an enigmatic title that distills intricate yet strangely melodious riffs, while heaviness takes center stage in the most jagged passages, in contrast to the introduction to Dissociation, which rekindles a sense of tranquility we thought had vanished. Distortion is obviously never far away, but one senses that the track is despite its already furious drums much more subdued, at least until the roars arrive to mar the landscape and infuse it with desperate energy. Silence settles in shortly before the song ends, but it is followed by Sillons sanglants and its ethereal Blackgaze roots, offering a final withered and nostalgic tableau – still as steeped in darkness as it was from the very first notes – while the banshee breathes a semblance of life into it by screaming with all her soul, even adopting a slight Old School touch at times before fading into nothingness after one last effort.
I was lucky enough to discover Plèvre at a live show, knowing nothing about the band, and their compositions had already blown me away. Cité mouroir produces exactly the same effect, confronting us with a visceral power that’s rare for such a young band.
95/100
