Band info
Band: Le Desespoir
Album: ‘Ville‘
Released: November 4th, 2024
Genre: atmospheric black metal
Location: France
Review
Hello, dear listeners and dearest haters that still stalk our socials, and welcome to another edition of ABMN’s Gloomy Sunday (just made this up, don’t worry there’s no such thing (unless asked for))!
Back to the usual seriousness, which is also pretty much deserved for the occasion, we are delighted to be featuring Le Desespoir today, a solo project of FB, from Toulouse. While active for some time now, last year saw FB‘s debut workout (with studio guests) which presents a personal journey through despair and anguish with a pinch of existential dread in the shape of a DSBM-cut approach to a more psych and avant-gardist black metal result, with intended prog hints and a well-arranged atmosphere. Presented by the artist himself this project also showcases a clear antifascist stance in this mix that we found impossible to miss, as a highly valuable concept to channel emotions and an artistic frame usually swamped and fiercely invaded by fash in the black metal circles.
This work is divided into two songs; ‘Ville‘, which is a 40 mins piece that FB has cut in two halves of 20 mins (if you’re listening to this on his Bandcamp, for example), is the core of the album which all of the instrumentation, vocal and guitar work really shines the most after the keyboard and easy string passages. A raw work fitting for the myriad of emotions behind a lyrical canvas that imagines the protagonist describing the pain and horror of life (and death) hand by-hand with natural elements, creating a vivid and organic vision that completes the work for the music, as well as it is helped by the cover artwork, that perfectly represents such a scene, for that is to be human: to face suffering until the end.
The album finishes off with “L’immaculée croyance en l’orage et la tristesse” (The immaculate belief in the storm and the sadness), a story in three parts within 14 minutes of song that makes for almost an hour of album, that speaks about a prosecuted woman, a ‘witch’, about her sacrifice by a hatred-fueled mass, in vain, after she wakes up back in a desolated and bloody outlook. Hopelessness pours from every note.
It’s not always easy to keep a fighting spirit, and works like ‘Ville‘ are a reminder of another important struggle: the one we fight with ourselves daily and how our conditions influence it. For usual listeners of projects like Hypothermia and Lifelover, Vanhelga, Apati and many others in the Swedish depressive scene (not those made up by thrash folks, again, still too common of a sight) and, to some extent, to other projects like Lustre, that would also appreciate the out-of-the frame originality and creativity that FB gathers together in this magnificent first work as Le Desepoir, for which we are thrilled to see how it develops further.
Other links and platforms:
BC: https://ledesespoir.bandcamp.com/
IG: https://www.instagram.com/le_desespoir_band/