There is no such thing as “dead time” for Bornyhake and Borgne and if you are thinking this came quickly, it did indeed. Only just over a year since last album Y was released here is another sprawling and labyrinthine work from the Swiss master and weighing in at a whopping 73 minutes long it’s a mammoth listening experience. Back this time are Lady Kaos on additional keys, Basstard on bass and Onbra on lyrical details and the first of these rasped out in an unholy fashion are the words “I hate you, I despise you” with full misanthropic pitch over an industrialised wasteland, magnificently illustrated via the striking cover-art.
There was a fair amount of creeping stealth about ‘Y’ and there is plenty of that here oozing out between the crevasses, the industrial beats at the beginning have a bit of a NiN and Skinny Puppy flavour about them but once things get going there is plenty of untamed savagery with the beats and bombast rising to a hateful pummelling. There are also some more ambient parts letting the lengthy songs breathe and bring a respite and feeling of dread for what is going to follow in their wake and a feeling of malevolence heralding the apocalypse and looking forward to a world in dreadful ruination.
Song titles such as ‘To Cut The Flesh and Feel Nothing But Stillness” and ‘The Swords Of The Headless Angels’ are there to augment the tale at the heart of things and it’s a fully immersive listening experience which is bound to keep the listener enthralled in a page turning fashion as it fills every space with seething blackness. The occasional burst of fire being the only bright light scorching the darkness and tinging things with a coat of foul sulphur. A couple of the songs are versed in French as is anticipated, it matters not how things are venomously spat out, the message is constant, all hail the machine age and the calamity of mankind as the one-eyed prophet marches ever forward “towards fiery hued horizons.”
Tracks sweep in after a passage of eerie ambience and majestically pummel furiously with what sounds like a theme from a long forgotten post-apocalyptic TV series atmospherically coursing through the keyboard driven melody and it is as futuristically sounding as it is fantastical. There are also passages that hark back to the barren graveyard vibe of an album ‘Royaume des ombres’ and the nuclear irradiated ghouls come out to play and hunt down the last survivors in this barren wasteland. The contagious guitar strum on ‘Near the Bottomless Precipice I Stand’ and the mutant thumping beats are like a diabolical Diabolicum, on the whole this certainly takes more from the black side of things and bands such as early Aborym and Mysticum than those mentioned previously and I am reminded that I really need to sit down and watch a bookmarked live performance from the ‘In Theatrum Denonium Festival’ to see how Borgne’s compelling vision translates to the live stage. They are top of the list of bands I have never seen that I really have to if ever the chance manifests. Suddenly a creepy crawl emerges from the bombast and we are taken off into a cadaverous Scarecrow sounding segment that Ministry would be proud of. Flames crackle and a mournful piano sonata haunts as we move into ‘I Drown My Eyes into the Broken Mirror’, there’s plenty going on and you never know where you are going to be taken next. The placement of this with clean vocal croons and a sorrowful sense of loss at the midway point is precise before the next crypt plunging, hateful plummet is a point to catch one’s breath.
Yet again Borgne have summoned up something uncompromising and a vision from hell itself. Their albums are far from formulaic, each one offering something different but the common thing is that they are all superbly constructed and (de) composed. Considering the amount of other stuff Bornyhake is involved with artistically and there have been plenty of other releases in the Covidera from him, his restless determination to cast humanity into a musical plague pit cannot be disputed. If you are new to his diseased visions this is as good a start as anywhere but be prepared to be fully consumed by an album that will keep you occupied until society collapses around it and this foretold vision becomes reality.
(8.5/10 Pete Woods)
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