Year of No Light

Ausserwelt

Conspiracy Records 2010

It's been four years since the last full-length dose of instrumental shoegazing doom from these French masters.  Their new four song album is a creature of elegance.  Persephone (Enna) gets the motion of the music drifting forward as layered riffs and sonic textures slowly shift in graceful and smooth arcs.  Throbbing guitars meet delicate, distant melodies within an endless black void.  A seamless transition in to track two Persephone (Core) belies the more imperial feeling of the opening drumbeats.  A continuation of the giant throbbing riffs a preceded by a subtle melody while drums crash all around like the collapsing of buildings from an earthquake, the noise continually mounting towards catastrophe.  Hierophante is up next and it is a formidable beast of sorrowful guitars and lurching mammoth riffs.  Halfway through the track a stream of whitenoise washes over you like a tidal wave.  The riffs woven over the top of the noise prevent one from getting lost in a sea of drone.  And then something totally unexpected happens, blasting black metal textures that bring to mind something from Wolves In The Throne Room.  This movement dies out at about the 11:00 minute mark where we are left to recover amongst shimmering ambience.  Abbesse closes the album with a dual layering of dreary marching and blasting black metal intensity.  Despite the furious drumming the song possesses a hypnotic quality that tempers any fury by drowning its fury with cold meditative nostalgia.  The song bludgeons its way to extinction with thick sludgy riffs and pounding drums.  The density of the guitars on this album are helped by having three guitarists.  While not as moving as Nord was for me, Ausserwelt creates moods of grace and melancholy that pull the listener into their audial abyss of emotions and sonic textures.