Amongst the many things that metal (of all sorts of flavours) is really, really good at, one of the most useful is its ability to literally and metaphorically block out every single other thing on the planet for however long you need it to. Whether it’s obnoxiously loud idiots on the train, that one neighbour who starts on his hedges at a frankly indecent time in the morning, or the general chaos of the world around you at any given moment, a well-chosen metal album can blot it all out. I always think of it as having a little aural cave to hide in if I need or want to.
Not every metal album can do it though. My all-time favourite for the purpose is Streetcleaner by Godflesh, but there are plenty of others noisy, dense, and heavy enough to cocoon you from the outside world. And whatever else this offering from Demande à la poussière turns out to be, first impressions put it squarely in the category above.
First up we have Inapte, which starts out with droning, buzzing and guitars that sound not unlike the mournful end of 90s indie, before a monstrous wave of sludgy doom steamrollers all before it, and the whole thing builds up to a level of heavy that you don’t come across every day, even in my line of work. There are interludes of varying sorts in the building assault, including spoken word that contrasts well with the desolate screams of the heavy bits, but the real focus here is the sheer weight of the overall sound: it’s lumbering, seething, and ungracefully heavy in a way that only really good doom can be.
Then the black metal comes out to play in the title track, Kintsugi, with faster, more brittle guitar work that’s straight out of the glory days of the second wave, and vocals that veer erratically between death, blackish, and the sort of shouty harsh vocals that I always associate with the early 2000s. This is followed by La parabole des aveugles, which sounds for all the world like Les Discrets having a crack at doom, honestly, just with heavier vocals than they generally go in for.
Moving forward, Ichinawa takes more of a God Is An Astronaut sort of vibe, and adds in rumbling guitars, harsh vocals, some aggressively heavy guitar work, and a slightly sinister undertone. I’m not entirely sure how onboard I am with some of this at this point, but it’s definitely distinctive if nothing else. Le sens du vent continues in a similar vein, but with a sparser, rippling sound that actually sounds not unlike Godflesh’s postier moments thanks to the hint of industrial grit lurking under the post. Next, we combine the post/industrial flavours with more of the fuzzy black and buzzing guitars that were present in Inapte back at the beginning, as Vulnerant omnes, ultima necat growls into life. It’s skilfully done, and I appreciate all the component parts of it, but somehow it doesn’t quite push my buttons in the way that it should on paper.
With Attrition, the sludge comes back to the fore, with an insidious post two-tone sound rolling away monotonously in the background, which continues into Fragmenté. At this point, the sound has become clearer, and this is the part of the album that really clarifies what Demande à la Poussière are all about. There’s sludge and doom, the weirder end of black metal, the melody and repetitive textures of post in general, but specifically post black, and there’s a harshness overlaying the whole thing like a veneer, adding a layer of grit above and beyond the blackened sludge. Then Miserere takes everything down a notch to begin with, starting with melancholic post, before exploding intermittently into what are probably the fastest passages of the album so far. It’s done well, but this is where I really start wanting more variety in the vocals – the fairly standard harsh vocals don’t entirely fit with the mood here, especially the slower, melodic passages. The heavy, desolate post sound of the slower passages in Miserere are developed further in Brisé, bringing together the blackened sludge and the livelier end of various flavours of post.
And then, finally, we come to Partie. Right from the off this sounds like something else entirely, and it’s a take on the band’s MO that I would’ve liked to hear more of before this point. This is straight folky-ish post, with spoken word/half sung lyrics, and just enough of the scuzz, fuzz and menace found elsewhere to fit in. It somehow feels much longer than its 2.44 length, and I say that as a compliment: this bit I’d like more of.
So, in summary, there’s a lot going on here. It’s an unusual mix, taking the well-trodden roads of blackened sludge, atmospheric post, and weaving the two together in all their heavy, noisy glory. The parts of Kintsugi where this really comes together are where the two are actually layered on top of each other and actively interacting, but there are a few parts where the two are essentially running parallel to each other, rather than being brought together as a complete sound. As a paid-up post fan (also a paid-up black metal fan, but the black here really only exists as a modifier to the sludge), I naturally gravitate to the postier, more melodic bits, as well as the parts where the post is in the mix generally, and while I don’t dislike the straight sludgy parts, some of them aren’t as distinct and engaging as they could be. Demande à la poussière are clearly very good at blackened sludge, but the parts where there’s more than that going on are far more engaging to me than the straightforward sludge. Part of this – for me anyway – is the vocals. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with the vocals themselves in a technical sense, but I feel like an album with so much going on has the potential to support a wider range of vocal styles, rather than fairly standard harsh vocals across the board. There’s some experimentation on the title track, but notable by its absence elsewhere. Quite apart from anything, the well-executed but otherwise unremarkable classic harsh vocals are a slightly peculiar choice for an album with as many layers as this does. This may be me being picky, because I listen to a lot of post, and I’ve heard more vocal styles in the process than you can shake a suitably elegantly miserable stick at. Not all of them good by any means, but varied at the very least.
All in all, this was a difficult one to review – I appreciate what Demande à la poussière are trying to do here, and there’s a lot in this album to enjoy, but also a lot of ways to move forward in future to expand and evolve the overall sound, which is rarely a bad thing for any band to have. So while I’ve enjoyed Kintsugi, it also leaves me somewhat more interested in where they’re going next, because it’s a good, solid album for the most part (not to mention excellent at drowning out idiots on the train), but the next one/s could be great. Which makes the title all the more fitting. Kintsugi is the Japanese practice of painting over repairs in gold, so that the repair (and thus the imperfection) makes the overall thing more beautiful than it was to begin with, and while this Kintsugi isn’t perfect, Demande à la poussière have made something that’s charming despite – possibly even because of – its imperfections.
(7/10 Ellie)
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