With an unusual sounding band name comes an unusual album. I’d seen this second album from the French band described as “melodic death metal” but this is much more than that. There’s a bit of everything here. The sound is arranged so that everything is around you, even the acoustic “Heart/Body”. Acoustic is what this isn’t. The base sound is an ultra heavy, sludgy, Red Harvest-like extreme metal riff but each time you get attuned to this idea on this 13 track album, something happens. Out of the blue on the opener “Out of Your Guts” comes an epic element. A crescendo of dark emotion arises from the steady and extreme framework. This emotion has thumping borders. The title of the album is appropriate.

All the tracks are different. “Without Any Form” is another transforming track, working its way out of extreme metal with a hardcore element into monstrous and dreamy post metal. The enormous hooks come as a surprise. There’s even a Viking folk metal track played out in an extreme and distorted way. In spite of its harshness, “To Faraway Coasts” works well as there is continuity. There’s a bit of Finntroll and Eluveitie about this one. As it drives on belligerently, flutes are somewhere in the air, which epic mayhem develops. A mellow guitar track follows, then dark rhythms return with “A Giant Wave Falls”. There’s a strong melody, into which a sad passage featuring orchestral sounds and light guitar work is inserted. A bigger explosion occurs. The band now build on the preceding plaintive orchestral section with an outstanding in-your-face dark guitar section. There’s a great mixture of moods here.

“Mad Crowds” is another strong but eccentric track, styled along US rock lines but overtly aggressive and with a rhythm which reminded me of Robert Palmer’s “Addicted to Love”. Soft sounds follow with “Heart/Body” and “Oceanic (Time Travel)”, on which the piano sounds like delicately dripping water. The final three tracks capture the variety of this album. Harsh extremity switches to the return of Celtic rhythms, which blend into a melodic track, starting acoustically and firing up into a metal instrumental with the Celtic element lurking in the background. Capturing the progressive nature of this work, the album closes with “Devouring this World” which mixes the funky, the extreme and the oddball. The secret track at the end does nothing as they usually don’t.

There’s a strong air of the experimental about this album. It seems to be a case of “let’s try everything”. It mostly works and it’s certainly intriguing but I did find “Beyond the Borders” a bit fragmented. The wealth of ideas need to be brought together more and more emphasis was needed on creating big moments. Nevertheless, this album has a lot going for it and I thought it was good.

(7 / 10 Andrew Doherty)

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