NO ONE IS INNOCENT: Ennemis (HARD ROCK): review / opinion to read on Music Waves

In 1994, 'La Peau' was released, the first single of No One Is Innocent, whose first album already expressed a black anger. One could have believed in 2021, that is to say 27 years later, that this anger was started by a certain weariness in front of societal events which repeat themselves tirelessly year after year. Moreover the group had said at the time of "Frankenstein" (2018) that one had probably touched the bottom letting imply a drying up of the subjects of inspiration. It should be remembered that this album had come in particular in reaction to the attacks of 2015 whose damage is still measured today. In the meantime, the demonstrations, the violence (police, "ordinary"), the pandemic and the resulting confinements, the qualifier of non-essential stuck to the culture have intervened as many events that allow No One Is Innocent to express its inalienable rage.

"Enemies" thus translates the statement of these three years passed since "Frankenstein". The testimony remains irremediably rebellious. No One Is Innocent remains untamable, a wild animal that never stops being touched by what surrounds it. If the group often pushes open doors denouncing politics disconnected from realities because practiced by people from the elite ('La Caste') or police violence ('Forces du Désordre') as well as the buzz sought by BFM and other CNEWS ('Les Hyènes de l'Info'), it's to better assert its bias to be on the side of the oppressed. No One Is Innocent, using the brutal force of the rock almost metal, encourages not to give up the fight with riffs always as raging without the group taking the role of messenger.

The theme is unchanging with lyrics full of gall, but No One Is Innocent is not content to do musically "on the spot". Helped in this sense by Charles de Schutter, the band perpetuates its quest towards a richer music from album to album. In "Enemies", if the base remains rock at the limits of metal, thus reassuring the fans, the instrumental moments and of varieties (in the original direction of the word) are legion: the tribal introduction of 'Forces of Disorder' reminds a bit Tool, the melodic 'Armistice' surprises with its melancholic side accentuated by the acoustic and the strings while being marked by the total absence of vocals, the audacity of the rhythmic and the sounds of guitars of 'Polit Blitzkrieg', the oppressive atmosphere established and felt while listening to 'Bulldozer' are so many examples of this perpetual research. In this sense, the band confirms that it is not there to take in hand the listeners. On the contrary, with this approach, No One Is Innocent leaves them free of their way of thinking and feeling things. To awaken rather than to convince...

"Enemies" is a new keystone making of No One Is Innocent a band which remains one of the last spearheads of the counter-culture. Intelligent and without concession, there is always in this group this vigour and this teenage ardour, a youth never lost, which allows him to keep his protesting spirit which he conveys through a music which gains more and more in intensity. - Official website

NO ONE IS INNOCENT

ENNEMIS

VERYCORDS

HARD ROCK