Year Of No Light – Consolamentum | Album Review

France’s Year Of No Light have spent literal decades building up a solid reputation as one of the most foreboding bands not just within their national post-metal scene, but the global genre as a whole.

Across three full lengths, the Bordeaux collective have become renowned as one of the most striking artists within the game, with the sextet having previously incorporated layers and elements of black metal, doom and even dark ambient into their sunless work in order to truly animate their apocalyptical vision. With this in mind, it’s no real suspire that the group’s new record follows the same approach. However, what is surprising is that even after years of continuous activity, the group are still able to up the ante once again. It’s undeniably up for debate upon release, but Year Of No Light may be gifting us their most tight, atmospheric and devastating work to date with Consolamentum.

With their fourth record and first outing on Pelagic Records, Year Of No Light manifest an impervious and impenetrable smog of post metal antagonism that ebbs and flows over it’s sprawling, almost hour-long run time. It’s a miasma of musical darkness, one that dissipates into an ethereal vapour at times before erupting into a maelstroms of near apocalyptical proportions at others. However, within this smog, fractals of faint light shimmer, offering brief respites of not just bring breathing space, but moments that highlight just how agonisingly tense this overall record is.

Opener ‘Objuration’ effortlessly establishes the fact that Consolamentum is going to be a turbulent listen. Coming into existence with dark ambience that erupts into a piledriving riff of pure opaque sludge, the track is 13 minutes of dynamic instrumental misery. The central riff thrashes and flails with enchained strength, incorporating emerging motifs as it suffocates under the blackened density that pins it down. The proceeding ‘Alétheia’ is a slightly more sombre and enigmatic piece, but one that still slowly unfurls with menace. There’s a profound cinematic scope to this track in the way it majestically builds, one comparable to the scenic majesty within Pg.Lost’s recent outing Oscillate. Whilst such vivid qualities are palatable and immersive, they are far from calming though. Following on from a period of accumulating post-rock layers, the track erupts into total hellfire, with the band’s two respective drummers, Mathieu Mégemont and Bertrand Sébenne respectively, channeling the end of all things with all annihilating fury. It’s pummelling, thunderous and utterly, utterly hypnotic in a way that’s purely malevolent and only allows you to reflect upon the devastation it delivers upon climax. It honesty sounds like the end of the world.

Consolamentum is heavy and glacial in it way it articulates it’s genuine rapturous levels of doom and is essentially a record devoted to summoning suffocating feelings of ease. However, it articulates Year Of No Light’s impeccable understanding of juxposotion and contrast with finesse in the process. ‘Interdit aux Vivants, aux Morts et aux Chiens’ plays out an almost gothic depiction of medical destruction in the way it swarms with streamlined blackened putrefaction but slowly, albeit subtly, introduces elements of quiet melodicism and mantras of introspection as it progresses. In relation, ‘Réalgar’ is a more open and airy movement that still bristles with menace, but allows reflection with it’s spaciousness. It’s these moments that allow you to truly marvel, ponder and digest the sheer calamitous atmosphere Consolamentum conjures flawlessly. These moments of release are brief yet executed flawlessly and if it wasn’t for these brief, moments of respite, Consolamentum would be overbearing in it’s agonizing toil and heft.

The closer of ‘Came’ is without a doubt the record’s most poignant, rememberable and striking moment. Serving as the full, choking encapsulation of the record’s apocalyptic theme, the closer opens with celestial, almost angelic synths that shriek as dark ambience leads the way into full black metal blast beats that bring forth the rapture. Closing on the sounds of bells ringing out against a wall of doomed noise, the track is a piece of sonically overwhelming art that animates the record’s subtext of rebirth of death on an incomprehensibly grandiose scale. The bells of ‘Came’ ring out the end of days, allowing the rebirth of a world that will ultimately face the same destruction with another subsequent listens of Consolamentum.

In all, whilst one could easily anticipate the contents of Consolamentum, the way Year Of No Light enliven their nightmarishly prophetic vision is simply jaw dropping and startling. This isn’t a record that’s for easy listening, nor is it an album for quick visitations. This is however a masterful exercise in dark dynamics that’s been designed with perfectionist detail in order to engulf the listener in a myriad of layers that suffocate the mind and bring thoughts of devastation en-mass. This record may be their celebration of twenty years of activity, but it just showcases that Year Of No Light’s best years are ahead of them.