This album with outstanding artwork is a “dark space epic of a person escaping into the most distant constellation of their mind with the help of narcotics”. Although this is Mathilde’s first album, the band has been around for eight years. Violence, fragility and melancholy are promised from eight-piece Mathilde whose stated inspirations are Behemoth, Emperor and Swallow the Sun.

We are floating through space, or so it seems. The transition is dramatic. Raging black metal ensues. The vocalist shouts manically, reminding me a little of Anorexia Nervosa’s RMS Hreidmarr. There is an intriguing keyboard wave adding to the disturbance. “Mise en Orbite” (Sent into Orbit) is extreme but precise. Tension is high and in danger of boiling over. Amid all this darkness, the keyboard emits the cyber sounds of video games. But always the energy is intense, and we’re on high alert. Yet this twelve-minute piece is far more than the simple exposition of agony. About nine minutes in, the diatribe stops and there’s a guitar section of epically atmospheric and evocative proportions. As an opening track and piece of music, “Mise en Orbite” is one hefty and dark statement.

“32 Décembre Partie I” starts in a sinister and creepy black metal style, hammering us downwards as the guitar plays a desultory tune. The vocalist sounds distant and agonised. A drum roll leads us into a cosmic dream as led by the keyboard we float once more. The tone is one of doom. “Let the cold cradle you, it has already carried me away” pronounces the vocalist in French. From the cold of winter that is “32 Décembre Partie I”, “Kepler-186 f” hits us like thunderous gunfire. The pumping drum and echoing distant sound effects match the sense of suffering, fear, alienation and disillusionment that the vocalist conveys. Stylistically there’s a section reminiscent of Cult of Luna which appears amid the extremity of expression. “Une Epave de Plus” (One More Wreck) starts as a metal cascade before thunderous and turbulent anger erupts. There’s a hint of symphony in this developing ball of fury and frustration. All around the angst-ridden vocalist is a rich and expressive instrumental line. The riff is hard. The vocalist is increasingly beside himself. The music is powerful.

The next song “Mathilde” is like black metal theatre. Impactful, Marhilde is evidently “une machine presque divine” (a near divine machine) who overwhelms our agonised vocal hero. Mathilde dies in the end. The music is dark, dramatic and heavy. Its drama mixed with delirium. The musical accompaniment is magnificent and majestic. Dark symphonic tones sweep through “32 Décembre Partie II”, the seventeen-minute monster which closes the album. Accompanied by dramatically dark music, the tortured vocalist guides us. “Adieu Mathilde, mon étoile, j’ai fini par te perdre” (Goodbye, Mathilde, my star, I ended up losing you) …. “On s’est laissés emporter par un 32 Décembre, cet hiver si long où tout nous appartient” (approximately translatable as: we allowed ourselves to be carried away by a December 32nd, that winter of such length where it all became part of us). The developing music is measured but no less intense. Each passage is evocative. At one point the music tones down and we go through a colourful reflective stage before the crashing sounds of atmospheric sludge return. The tones are weighty and expressive of the psychological anguish which characterises this album. And so it ends.

“Mathilde” is hugely atmospheric and psychologically twisted. It all makes for great drama. It’s very well managed. I felt the turbulence and agony. This is a work of great imagination. “Mathilde” is an outstanding album.

(9/10 Andrew Doherty)

https://www.facebook.com/mathilde.black.metal

https://mathilde-blackmetal.bandcamp.com/album/32-d-cembre