What do New Order, The Cardiacs, Lacuna Coil, Depeche Mode & Blurr Thrower have in common? Well, they all have album covers with flowers as a central motif. I have been trying to work out what flowers adorn Les voûtes and what their significance is but am neither a botanist or a French speaker so am a bit lost about it all, especially seeing them on an atmospheric black metal album. Still, it’s a striking image and Blurr Thrower are a striking band having proven that on their debut EP Les avatars du vide back in 2018. This release provided 2 massive tracks of harrowing and abrasive music dealing with mental anguish and psychological torment. Perhaps on continuing with these themes, on an album whose title and first track translates to Vaults and Dungeon, illustrates the fragile state of the mind and how it disintegrates like flowers themselves?
Anyway, let’s move onto safer ground, the music itself. Playing the EP and album back-to- back I was blown into and nearly through the wall when ‘Cachot’ honed in. Having not adjusted the volume I can safely say the production here is somewhat louder! This is after it sets itself up with a shrill tone and unleashes a huge scream with everything else crunching in on top of it. The EP set up the quaking, shaking sonic template and the album, this time with similar running time but 4 tracks solidifies on this with meaty multi-layered ballast. Not much is known about the people behind the music apart from the fact they are from Paris, we don’t even know how many there are in the group although I would have a guess that they might be a duo, one providing the music and the other the hollering wild yells and screams.
Musically this hammers and smashes using vigorous brute force through its movements. There is not a huge amount of change through individual tracks and there is no break between songs. Space is filled by trembling distortion and like everything else presented it is elongated and suffocates, clinging to the listener for nearly unbearable lengths of time; well, that’s what it feels like. It’s the only respite from the massive disgruntled and deranged yells that follow every other step of the way and torture with their anguished rage. This is not a particularly comforting listening experience but that certainly doesn’t mean it is not something that is good and a pleasure to experience. I am reminded a bit of the Cascadian way of doing things, that could be the wild progressive thrust of the music as well as the trembling freneticism of a band such as Boss-De-Nage. I guess that poses the question of whether you would describe Blurr Thrower as Post Black Metal or not, but there’s certainly nothing nice and delicate about what we are confronted with here.
It’s not an album to dissect track by track, everything does Blurr into each other, shifts are subtle as one track builds and prepares to throw you into its main tumult; never has a name been quite so apt for a band. At first this just battered me into submission but there are subtleties between the folds and I have found this growing on me, even if it has been slapping me round the face in the process. Retaining an all too rare mystery about themselves Blurr Thrower are a bit of an enigma in every respect. With valentine’s day coming up this could be a very good gift, if you say it with flowers they only die, the rancid bloom here will be fragrant for plenty of time to come.
(8/10 Pete Woods)
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