In just two weeks, French sexies… uh… sextet Year of No Light will release their 3rd official full-length record, Tocsin, through Debemur Morti Productions. Caught somewhere between bludgeoning metal bluster and chamber orchestra sound sculpture, Tocsin arrives three-and-a-half years after the band’s last official studio album, Ausserwelt (though only a few months after their soundtrack project Vampyr). There’s a lot of doom here, both in pacing, tonality and instrumentation, but sweeter sides exist as well. This is instrumental music meant to carry you to other worlds within yourself, and it leaves all torturous virtuosity for somebody else’s band.
But why wait two weeks? You can get a full stream of the album now through DMP’s Bandcamp site, and after checking it out, you can pre-order your own copy here at www.eitrin.com. And beneath the album stream, you can check out the band’s track-by-track explanation of their most recent work.
Enjoy your Friday! Enjoy Year of No Light’s Tocsin!
Tocsin (words by Pierre): A sepulchral incantation seeking for vengeance with a majestic and mournful vibe. The heavy monolithic riffing strengthens the ritual aspect of the narration. It’s also the first song we wrote when we started to work on the album. We wanted something heavy and crushing with a funeral doom atavism. The last portion of the track is also an unintended tribute to a band we all cherish.
Géhenne (words by Jérôme): A simple, melodic and straightforward song, very similar to its demo version. A noisy yet melodic maelstrom highlighting some of our influences: raw punk rock (MC5 & Stooges), primitive black metal (Darkthrone) and abrasive noise (Deity Guns, Sonic Youth). In three words: intensity, trance and climax.
Désolation (words by Jérôme): Géhenne’s antithesis, with a lot of attention paid to arrangements and sustained by the use of brass instruments. Désolation is a topic example of the band’s bipolarity. It is like a canticle closing the first part of the record, with an introspective and epic vibe.
Stella Rectrix (words by Mathieu): To my ears, it’s like if 4AD had released a doom record in the mid-80’s. And it’s like a music-lover’s dream… All the bass foundation is played on a minimoog and the lead on a sickened string machine. So, it’s pretty much a perverted electronic track. Something we wanted to experiment on this record.
Alamüt (words by Pierre & Jérôme): An involuntary anticosmic anthem. This fucking track haunted us for months and almost drove us mad. It also proceeds from one of the most destructured writing process we ever faced. Alamüt went through a lot of incarnations, but we had to burn them. This was chaotic, painful and absurd. It’s probably the most destabilizing song of the album, where droning/neurasthenic krautrock meets over harmonized climax and salutary chorus. The last portion of the track is like…well…think of a bunch of retards with insane minds playing some György Ligeti.
