MAUDITS: Maudits (POST METAL): review / opinion to read on Music Waves

If Maudits offers us this autumn its first opus, the band does not however revolve around obscure musicians, which explains the cheeky quality of this eponymous album. In spite of a fame that has remained too confidential, The Last Embrace is a name that is certainly not unknown to you. After twenty years and five offerings spent crisscrossing atmospheric metal on the borders of progressive, the quintet has finally decided to fall asleep forever. But Olivier (guitars), Anthony (bass) and Christophe (drums) wished to continue working together, to create a music always personal and demanding. Maudits was born from this double desire.

Those who, attracted by the name of their former home port, hope to find again in this first effort a metal both powerful and elegant with a feminine voice will be first disappointed, since the project, solidly anchored in a guitar/bass/drums base, is void of any vocal imprint. This should absolutely not scare away the lonely fans of The Last Embrace nor the hermetic ears of the instrumental format. Maudits has enough qualities to make a point for that. But what exactly is it about?

The names of Dehn Sora and William Lacalmontie (Throane, Ovtrenoir), who gravitate around the project, should already not mislead you, the trio doesn't navigate (quite) in the dark waters of heavy and apocalyptic post metal, although the color palette in which their universe is steeped is indeed not conducive to joyful outbursts. In reality, Maudits is indefinable and elusive. Doom, ambient, progressive are the labels that are stuck on his face without any of them really define the style practiced. So much the better. What is certain on the other hand is that this record is sheltered from any commercial imperative, by artists driven by a beautiful spirit of freedom.

This is why they opted for instrumental expression, a perilous exercise. This is also why they do not hesitate to begin the listening with the longest track of the lot, which, during thirteen minutes, follows the sinuous path of a procession, either massive or aerial, stormy or ethereal. The fact is that this (goldsmith's) piece tends to be a kind of experimental synthesis, as if it had served as a working base for its progenitors.

Nevertheless, this monumental introduction cannot hide the next five tracks, more stocky but no less fascinating and just as adventurous. Striking and telluric, 'Resilience' has something of an emotional roller coaster with multiple layers, roaring with a dull and hypnotic tension. If 'Liminal' and 'Solace', which embarks a violin with bony lines, display the most ambient (for the former) and tender (for the latter) face of its authors, 'Grain Blanc' is filled with a heavy and tempestuous energy, however softened by a melancholic orchestration while 'Im Voraus Verloren' sinks into the folds of a twilight doom with no hope of return.

While we weren't expecting it, 'Maudits' sets the bar very high with this protean album shining with dreamlike gleams and yet rooted in a reality on the brink of the abyss... - Official website

MAUDITS

MAUDITS

KLONOSPHERE

POST METAL