PENSEES NOCTURNES : GROTESQUE
Les Acteurs de l’Ombre Productions
Just like everyone else who is lucky enough to be fascinated by Vaerohn’s avant-garde black metal project Pensees Nocturnes, I was completely knocked out by 2009’s debut “Vacuum”, an incredibly bold and intelligent imagining of how depressive black metal and neoclassical elegance could come together and spawn twisted, beautiful offspring. If my thoughts on its predecessor tended towards the ‘overload’ of feeling and pain it conveyed, “Grotesque” is an even greater exhortation, an incredibly ambitious and eerie album that calls you into its lethal psychological embrace like a siren.
Pensees Nocturnes is avant-garde in the best possible way, so that when I say that at times “Grotesque” is cinematic, or classically-inflected, or dreamy, or utterly melancholic, you’ve got to skew those descriptions through a weird and skin-creepingly unsettling glass. Opener “Vulgum Pecus” alone should be enough to convince you of both the peculiarity and the ambition of this endeavour; dirge-like yet perversely playful, it put me in mind of my other favourite French oddities, Vehementer Nos. The black metal side of Vaerohn’s split personality is more fully-formed this time around, particularly on tracks such as the discordant and insanity-toeing “Monosis”, and the powerfully evolving “Rahu”.
Still, the ability to thread together a toweringly fierce section of shred and blast isn’t what defines Pensees Nocturnes; instead it is the unique and deft way in which this element is occasionally overpowered by Vaerohn’s incredible classical touch. “Paria” is a beautiful example, a typically long structure which privileges its gorgeous piano movements as much as the hysterically keening yet slinking, almost sexual depressive black metal beginning. “Rahu”, too, has a delicate and delicious layer, whilst “Hel” manages to evoke Peer Gynt entering the troll’s cave and classic timpani-and-reverb black metal concurrently, whilst still finding space for an amazing, eerie string break. Much of “Grotesque” also touches on a bluesy, loose spirit that adds a whole other dimension to the song-writing, fitting in strangely well with the shades of insanity.
If you’ve come across and enjoyed any experimental depressive black metal in the past (the awe-inspiring Gris, for example), I can’t recommend Pensees Nocturnes strongly enough, and if you’re just looking for something a little different, something that can make you stop and think, feel and fear, whilst representing the highest standard of musical intelligence and song-writing audacity, this too is for you. “Vacuum” was hard to top, but “Grotesque” bursts beyond its boundaries, promising a new and vastly though-provoking experience.
92/100
ELLEN SIMPSON
