DECASIA is a heavy psych rock trio who released its debut album “An Endless Feast for Hyenas” on last April. The band is coming up with an explosive cocktail mixing stoner, doom, psych rock and grunge. Inspired by what heavy rock scene does best (All Them Witches, Colour Haze, Elder…), DECASIA stands out with its own recipe. The band also has a really rock’n’roll energy, especially on stage where they offer supercharged and immersive shows.
This summer, the frenchies shot a music video in the middle of Auvergne’s countryside, not far from the barn where they recorded the album. The video features not one but two songs from the album : “Ilion” and outro “Hyenas At The Gates”. A clip shot in total DIY over 4 days in the countryside, written and directed by the band with the help of audiovisual students. Spoiler : a very special old car is featured in the music video đ
Meanwhile, the band has just announced tour dates in France, Belgium and Germany from April 7 to 22. DECASIA will be playing at Hellfest, on Saturday June 17 (Valley Stage, 10am).
Stone from the Sky is a instrumental stoner trio from France. Formed in 2012, the band is going to release its third album, Songs from the Deepwater, on November 5th, 2021.
They managed to build themselves a strong reputation on the heavy psych & stoner french and European scene thanks to gigs in Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, UK or Czech Republic.
Among their influences, we can mention All Them Witches, The Ocean or the french screamo band Mort Mort Mort. Those different references makes the bandâs strength, who is able to offer us an evolution with each new album.
On Friday, September 10th, Stone from the Sky release a first single, “City I Angst,” alongside a music video. With this song, the band gives us a tour of their home town of Le Mans, France.
ââSongs From the Deepwaterââ, November 5th
The band is pursuing its transformation and keeps breaking the rules of traditional stoner rock. This new album is still loyal to the bandâs artistic identity but drags us into a darkest and more aggressive atmosphere. No more solar songs “Colour Haze” style to make room to new playing fields inspired by post rock, scream or post hardcore, without denying their fuzz essence.
Bordeaux, France post-metal sextet Year of No Light announce their forthcoming fifth studio album Consolamentum today, sharing the first single “RĂŠalgar” via all DSPs. Hear and share “RĂŠalgar” via Bandcamp, Spotify and YouTube.
Consolamentum is the band’s first album on Pelagic Records. To celebrate joining the label and Year of No Lights‘s 20th anniversary, they will release a limited edition deluxe wooden box set of the band’s entire discography, titled Mnemophobia on July 2nd. The handmade, hand-silkscreened wooden box features 12 vinyl LPs in 6 gatefold sleeves, exclusive colored vinyl variants, a slipmat, metal pin, patch and poster. For more information, see HERE.
Year of No Light’s lengthy, sprawling compositions of towering walls of guitars and sombre synths irradiate a sense of dire solemnity and spiritual gravity, and couldn’t be a more fitting soundtrack for such grim medieval scenarios. But there is also the element of absolution, regeneration, elevation, transcendence in the face of death. Consolamentum is dense, rich and lush and yet somehow feels starved and deprived. It comes as no surprise that ever since the beginning of their career, the band have had an obsession for the fall of man and salvation through darkness. The term âconsolamentumâ describes the sacrament, the initiation ritual of the Catharic Church, which thrived in Southern Europe in the 12th – 14th Century â a ritual that brought eternal austereness and immersion in the Holy Spirit.
âThere’s a thread running through all of our albumsâ, says the band, collectively âan exploration of the sensitive world that obeys a certain telos, first fantasized (“Nord”) and reverberated (“Ausserwelt”), then declaimed as a warning (“Tocsin”). The deeper we dig, the more the motifs we have to unveil appear to us. Yes, it’s a bit gnostic. This album is invoked after the Tocsin, it’s the epiphany of the Fall.”
With debut album Nord (2006) and sophomore release Ausserwelt (2010), the band madethemselves a name in the European avant-metal scene. Extensive tours of Europe, North America and Russia in 2013 and 2014, including two appearances at Roadburn festival, Hellfest and a spectacular performance in a 17th Century fortress in the Carpathian mountains introduced them to a broader and quickly growing international audience.
With their seminal 3rd album Tocsin, released in 2013, Year Of No Light reached the peak of their career thus far â a logical decision that Consolamentum was made with the same team again: recorded and mixed by Cyrille Gachet at Cryogene in Begles / Bordeaux, mastered by Alan Douches at West West Side.
âWe wanted this album to sound as organic and analog as possibleâ, comments the band. âAll tracks were recorded live. The goal was to have the most natural, warm and clean takes possible, to give volume to the dynamics of the songs. We aimed to have a production with a singular personality.â
For the adept listener, Consolamentum seems to be venturing deeper into the dark and claustrophobic spheres explored on Tocsin â but the band doesn’t conceive of the evolution of their music in a linear way, as it would be apparent from looking at their discography.Â
âItâs more a matter of sonic devotion. Music against modern times. Year Of No Lightâ is above all a praxis. We wanted intensity, trance, climax and threat, all of them embedded in a bipolar and mournful ethos.”
Consolamentum is huge, poignant, frightening, sublime, smothering and cathartic â and, much like Decibel Magazine says of its predecessor, it’s âaudacious, memorable and supremely confident.”
Consolamentum will be available on 2xLP, CD and digital on July 2nd, 2021 via Pelagic Records. Preorders are available HERE.
Hailing from Lyon, France, doom metal trio PraĂż (Antonie Berthet-Bondet – drums, Maud Gibbons – guitar, and Jason Rols – bass) let you know right away on their self-titled album that they are not screwing around with you.
Rols’ opening bass on the first track, “First Trip,” sets the creepy tone / begins the ritual and soon Gibbons’ guitar is calling to ancient things beyond the stars and Berthet-Bondet’s drums are heralding their arrival. The song floats into psychedelia close to the nine-minute mark and brings back to Earth, although we return wondering if there are things lurking in the shadows (Spoiler: There are.)
“Heretic Eye” also gets off to a dark, quiet start before unleashing fuzzed fury that might knock you out of your chair. “Sulphur” ups the speed a bit and reveals some of the band’s prog-rock influences (mainly through some of the time signatures and Gibbons’ chords early in the track) before the raw power of all three members hits you in the chest like a sledgehammer…and then quiets down to a low rumble before smashing up the place again. The song goes through at least three changes, and each one is somehow better than the last. The final track, “Bottom of the Universe,” sounds like its emerging from a black hole somewhere beyond Alpha Centauri, so the name is appropriate. It hits you with big cymbal crashes and bass thuds and guitar chords that sound like the devil revving the engine of his hot rod. Then, the bottom drops out and we’re floating in a psychedelic Steve Ditko-drawn universe that leads us to a Jack Kirby-drawn post-apocalyptic planet.
The album is only four instrumental songs, but the shortest one is eleven minutes and twelve seconds in length. They don’t cheat the listener or themselves. They explore the shadows as long as they like. Do you dare join them on the journey?
Keep your mind open.
[Take a trip over to the subscription box while you’re here.]
