NausikaDalazBlindaz, September 10th, 2018

I guess when you have to spell out the title of your first album in capital letters and each one followed by a full stop, you really do mean B.U.S.I.N.E.S.S and business ... or rather, business-like is the best word to describe French BM duo Penitence Onirique's debut recording. A lengthy work coming close to 50 minutes in playing time, this album is really best heard in one go all the way through without pause: from start to finish, it's one continuous fast-flowing river of raw, scourging atmospheric black metal. Normally the genre the music here belongs to is described as melodic as well as atmospheric raw, and certainly melody does exist but it's not especially distinctive: it tends to rise out of the flow of acid-sounding noisy BM and retreats back again without forming a definite pattern. Songs tend to sound very much alike and the speed at which they race, with constant blast-beat percussion that doesn't develop into particular beat or rhythmic patterns, is no help either in identifying particular tracks or sections within them. So the best approach for listeners here is to let this whole album envelop them with its brand of immersive molten-fire aggression, pouring fury and mind-scouring acidic bile through their ears, cleaning out everything and replacing it all with malevolent blackened anger and hatred.

On some songs like "Le Sel", the best feature of the music is the booming tom-tom work by multi-instrumentalist Bellovesos and on others the sheer dense wall of guitar noise, constant in its fury and power, and often jewel-like in an evil way, will impress listeners the most. Vocals by Diviciacos are some of the most death-rattling horrific to be heard on a black metal album. Special mention should be made of the overall production and sound - the entire work is very professional, with all instruments clearly heard, and in its own sinister way very majestic without becoming bombastic; and the album's sound, slightly blurred and scuzzy, gives the music and impression of being larger and more epic than it is in spite of the thin guitars.

As the album continues, the music begins to improve with the third track "Le Sel", becoming a little bit slower and more structured with more definite riffs and melodies, and starting to develop something of an identity with some folk music influences. With respect to the range of sound and texture, mood and other structural elements though, the music is still restricted and the mood and rarely strays from anger, hostility and slight melancholy. The title track brings a more sombre mood and a martial beat but apart from those cosmetic details, the music basically continues with a one-track mind all its own.

As long as listeners treat the album as if it's a continuous recording and don't mind that the songs lack individuality, they will find it an absorbing, mesmerising experience. Those who want actual songs will find the music monotonous and repetitive.

autothrall, November 4th, 2016
Written based on this version: 2016, CD, Emanations (Digipak)

V.I.T.R.I.O.L is a beautiful looking CD package, a trait I'm starting to associate with Les Acteurs de 'Ombre recordings on the whole, this one through its sub-label Emanations. Upon reading this French duo's genre, I was expecting some black metal of an atmospheric inclination, and that is precisely what is showcased throughout five substantial tracks of about 8-11 minutes in length each. However, Pénitence Onirique does not achieves its goal through techniques one might expect...this is not a work of endless ambient passages ceding and receding from the predicted grimness of its medium, but rather a straightforward barrage of black metal given a gleam by the very resonance of its guitar chords and melodies.

Yes, with the exception of the slogging bass line and open picking that christen the title track, and an occasional atmospheric cutaway (like the one in the midst of "Le Sel"), this is roughly 50 minutes of pure black metal force channeled through the shining imagery it evokes upon its external appearance. Floods of chords and and tremolo picked melodies cascade and crescendo about the ceaseless thundering of the beats, and the album relies heavily on repetitious sequences to transport its listener off to the landscapes within the band's own inner vision. The pacing will occasionally subside to a wall of simple, heavy chords above which some airy, almost folksy notes are painted like clouds (also in the belly of "Le Sel"), but this is not necessarily a band out to oust convention from their creative process, rather than hone it onto a particular element of stay consistent to that for vast gulfs of time. The vocals are a standard, often sustained black rasp in French, that gets lost in the streams of notes but also helps to give it a grimier, more fulfilling effect as the shadows of corruption seek to crumble the listener from his/her exposure to higher-pitched, light-touched tones.

I struggled a little with my overall reaction to V.I.T.R.I.O.L because it's an album I find successful at finding and sticking to its chosen soundscape, just one I didn't really enjoy. The devil is in the details, and for me there just weren't enough enduring, memorable riffs fueling the experience. There are certainly a handful of highlights, but even with repeated listens there wasn't a lot of aural subtext which emerged from the constant momentum it thrives upon. It occasionally bordered on those mesmeric patterns it seems to promise, but I almost feel that a little more dynamic range and variety would have done the record a world of good...because when that occurs, it does. However, when you're in the right head space for an album that feels like you're staring at sunlight reflected off an icy, glacial mass that extends as far as one can see...OR, if you're in the market for that strain of repetitive, melodic black metal that a lot of French-Canadian acts like Forteresse seem to have mastered, then Pénitence Onirique is a solid starter with potential.

-autothrall
http://www.fromthedustreturned.com

autothrall, December 9th, 2019
Written based on this version: 2019, CD, Les Acteurs de l'Ombre Productions (Digipak)

The Pénitence Onirique debut V.I.T.R.I.O.L. back in 2016 might not have completely won me over, but it was unarguably a wall of ebullient, shining black metal force which approached from an interesting angle a genre which is too often defined by convention or cloning those to come before. Granted, there is a backbone of traditional atmospheric Euro BM behind what the Frenchmen are writing, but the unending wall of sound created by the guitars and vocals gave it a fresh feel without quite teetering off into that boggy stretch of the medium we characterize as 'post-' anything. Their new album, Vestige, might not possess such a transcendent look to it on the surface, but I found the subtleties and variation here a fraction more enjoyable than I found its predecessor.

The pacing here shifts between surging, blasting black metal textured with repetitious, higher guitar patterns that are constantly saturating the upper atmosphere of the album with an ambient or post rock flavor, and then more measured, longer pieces which accomplish much the same but through a more stolid, doomed approach. On occasion the band will drop out the beats and just let some of the melodic pickings ring out, and it's glorious, the entire album feels like this tide that is going to drown you, release you, and then drown you again. The vocals are primarily molded in the traditional rasp that was also dominant on the debut, however they'll throw some cleaner chants, howls and even some more brutal guttural vocals in there just to increase the diversity of emotions they can flatten you with. They don't repeat themselves too often rhythmically, I mean the blasted stuff is probably one of the higher percentages but even in that you'll hear little differences in the drums or the fabric of the guitars being woven above them that help distinguish them a little, even though as a whole the record is incredibly fluid and coherent. Drums are intense, bass lines are solid even if they don't really poke through the desperate mass of sounds above them.

Now I think, atmospherically, Pénitence Onirique has its style on lock, and there's a certain segment of the modern black metal fandom which just wants that snarling intensity measured up against a more shoegaze-like panoply of chord options who really aught to check this band out, and in fact to that same crowd I say also track down V.I.T.R.I.O.L. One area in which I still think the group can grow, however, is by writing catchier guitar patterns...while I love the sonic half of their approach, there aren't a lot of guitar licks here that truly wanted to draw me back towards the album. Even the instrumental 'interlude' piece "Hespéros" felt like it was just sort of drifting there, a fine backdrop for a morning rise from bed with the sun glaring upon your brown, but not possessing any inherent note patterns that stuck with me, no infectious melodies embedded in there. It's all just sort of competently crafted emptiness that suits an emotional notion, almost like incidental music, and there's a place for that, surely, but it still lacks the hooks to become much more.

-autothrall
http://www.fromthedustreturned.com