A fierce and forlorn French blackened beauty…
Released on 28 October 2016 through Finisterian Dead End (website; Facebook) and reviewed by Jason Guest
Formed in 2006 with their first EP, Heights’ Shivers, released in 2010, it seems that French black-metal group Abduction like to take their time and get the job done properly. And listening to Une Ombre Régit Les Ombres, the band’s first full length and first release since 2010, it’s clear that getting the job done properly means working on the material from writing through production and release until it is honed to perfection.
With brief but beautiful opener ‘L’horloge’ setting a haunting tone with the lone clean guitar casting a soft but menacing shadow, the five tracks that complete the album bring life to that shadow and give full reign to its sometimes muted, oft-times mighty and always melancholic forces. Between 8- and 12-minutes long, the tracks plot intricate and intriguing journeys that take in the fierce, the forlorn, the introspective and the aggressive across a broad spectrum of dynamic and textural diversity.
With such long compositions, Abduction fearlessly take on the challenge of sustaining musical integrity. And for the most part, they do so without fail. Like most albums of this ilk, there is the odd moment when the strain can be felt but Abduction seem capable of recognising this and rectifying it by shifting the music into sonically stimulating territories that steer clear of the clichéd fast bit, slow-bit, atmospheric-bit rollercoaster structures.
Avoiding tedium is not Abduction’s goal. It’s the music that guides them, that shapes itself and informs this musically adept four-piece what they should do and when they should do it. And when a band is capable of abandoning itself to its muse, thence comes the reward. While Une Ombre Régit Les Ombres is a highly ambitious and well-executed album, there are a few times when the tracks feel disjointed and laboured and could perhaps benefit from being trimmed by a minute or so. But given the effort Abduction have put in to this obvious labour of love, they can hardly be discredited for that.
7 out of 10
Track list:
- L’horloge
- Naphtalia
- Sainte Chimère
- Les frissons des cimes
- Une ombre régit les ombres
- L’enlèvement d’automne
