France’s Year of No Light are back with a fourth album of atmospheric drone, doom, post-metal or whatever you would like to call it. “Exploring boundless possibilities of unique transcendental expressions of sound” is one description. The key is in the atmosphere and the band’s ability to hook us into their latest world.
Well, they get off to a good start. The lengthy opener and title track is slow, patient and ambient. The drum knocks out a steady, tribal beat. It is questioning and colourful. The guitar line is predictably heavy, punishing and ponderous but also spooky. The echoes make it bigger. The dreamy aura makes this massive piece into something melancholic. It’s like a series of statements being made in a grinding machine. “Tocsin” progresses from one big and dirty soundscape to another. “Géhenne”, which follows, again covers a wide space. There’s an air of nastiness as you would expect of a song whose title represents the destination of the wicked. Yet the start is like a bland rock-metal riff played in a high pitched post-metal style. I didn’t get too excited but I did appreciate the atmospheric quality, which recalled the musical accompaniment for a thriller. Year of No Light have been involved in creating soundscores for French artists. It makes sense.
“Désolation” starts ominously but its regular beat expands into a star-gazing piece of guitar-ringing piece of magic. As it slows down, the sound is like a ship’s horn. It’s not clear where this will go but that’s part of the suspense. The ringing guitar returns and it’s more majestic than ever. Fuzziness creeps through this hypnotic and outer-worldly offering. The more the guitar repeats, the more magical it is. If it were medication, the packaging would prescribe that it should be absorbed, not swallowed. It plays on the nerves. It is powerful. “Désolation” ends with crashing chords lengthening and slowing down, while providing the foil for the even more funereal and cosmically orientated “Stella Rectrix” which follows. We’re now in doom territory. The slight fuzziness and the airy whistling of the keyboard add an eerie edge to the slow constancy of the drum. Melancholy turns to Burzum-like bleakness as the track hits a more morbid level than its predecessors, never overstating itself even when the tension heightens towards the end. Again, this track has a film-like quality. Patience is then the order of the day on “Alamüt”. Behind the obscure sound there is something threatening. Heavy crashes have been replaced by softer touches from the drum department. As the track accelerates murkily, it eventually bursts out and presents a picture of a desolate landscape with random explosions going on. A dreary tone marks the nightmare that this post-metal extravaganza seems to represent. It stays mobile, however, like a train on the move, eventually giving way to a melancholic symphonic cascade before fading away.
“Tocsin” clearly isn’t about ticking boxes but it does do that, with most angles of a panoramic style being covered. It’s an interesting album as patterns emerge and develop. I wouldn’t say I was spellbound throughout but it has great atmospheric qualities.
(7.5/10 Andrew Doherty)
Leave a Reply