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Les Discrets: Ariettes oubliées...
14/11/12 || Smalley
I’m sure everyone reading this loves metal delivered in the “traditional” fashion; y’know, hard, heavy, highly headbang-worthy, etc. Alliteration ftw biatch, go look the word up. But yeah, I sure as hell know I like our style delivered in the traditional way just as much as the next guy does… but, sometimes, it’s still nice to hear a “metal” band (incoming UGS flashback!) that uses traditional metal textures in a very non-traditional way, which is exactly what France’s Les Discrets does, and exactly why they stick out from all the meathead Suffocation ripoffs clogging up our artform, and all of their ilk.
You see, these guys create a strongly sensitive, intimate, melancholic mood with their music, ironically, using a mainstay of metal (a distorted rhythm guitar) as a sonic anchor, but in such a way that it doesn’t hog the spotlight at all; rather, the riffing is used in a relatively unassuming way, establishing steady rhythms as a base to help drive the songs forward, a base on top of which, Discrets builds the elements that hold the true appeal here, layering on multiple, distinctive sounds such as faint, echoing lead guitar, folky acoustic, synchronized dual-lead vocals, and so on, creating the rich, flowing mix of sounds that define this record. In this way, Discrets becomes much more of a beauty than a beast, but with still a bit of an edge to keep it metal, at least in a certain way; none of the riffs here are really “Smoke on the water”-memorable, but they aren’t meant to me, and the memorability gap is more than made up by what the beautiful lighter instruments do.
And, while the unique, echoing soundscapes would probably be enough by themselves to make a good record, Discrets also show a very intuitive sense of ebb-and-flow through their songwriting, knowing when to switch things up to keep us interested, but also when to repeat something so we get to enjoy more of that section’s beauty; they can go from more uptempo & heavier to slower & more melodic, break up the pace by interjecting a well-timed interlude or two, build things up to a climatically different ending, and so forth, and most importantly, have all of that flow naturally from one style to the next.
That also helps keep their music from becoming one-note, despite the rather consistently sad moods on display here, since those moods are continually reconfigured and used in somewhat different ways. This means that the track-to-track variety ain’t half-bad, though Discrets doesn’t exactly genre-hop from song to song. Still, they do help each track to have a bit of its own identity, all the while retaining the great sense of aural spacey-ness, and the powerful, highly emotionally-charged atmosphere.
I’d also like to point out the synchronized male/female vocals here, which, unlike some bands such as Draconian, who combine harsh male vocals with clean female ones in order to strengthen one another through contrasts, Discrets succeeds with the much more novel approach of syncing up light, clean, ethereal vocals from BOTH genders, creating a deeper, more layered dual-performance, instead of forcing our attention to focus more on one style or the other (not that I don’t dig Draconian’s approach too…). Some tender spoken word sections certainly don’t hurt either. It’s all very neat-o, and yet another memorable sound element here.
So, while Discrets may also qualify as being more weepy, sensitive Frenchy metal, they aren’t as repetitively shoegazey (in the heavier parts, at least) as fellow frog-eaters Alcest are, with a greater variety of sound dynamics, so if you couldn’t get into teh ‘cest, maybe these guys/girl can tickle your pickle better on that front. I still like the new Alcest just as much, just comparing one contrast between the two here. Anyway, a few more darker moments (which would be better reflective of the creepy album art) would be welcomed, since what is here of that nature is quite haunting, but that’s not a biggie really, and “Ariettes oubliées…” still finishes out strong as an intelligent, thoughtful, unique, emotional journey of a “metal” record (srsly, it’ll be better than you think!). Give the Bloodbath a rest for about 45 minutes, and go get in touch with your more estrogen-y side for a while with this puppy.
- Information
- Released: 2012
- Label: Prophecy Productions
- Website: www.lesdiscrets.com
- Band
- Fursy Teyssier: lead vocals, guitars, bass
- Audrey Hadorn: spoken vocals
- Winterhalter: drums
- Tracklist
- 01. Linceul d’hiver
- 02. La Traversée
- 03. Le Mouvement perpétuel
- 04. Ariettes oubliées I : Je devine à travers un murmure…
- 05. La Nuit muette
- 06. Au Creux de l’hiver
- 07. Après l‘ Ombre
- 08. Les Regrets
