There’s a little bit of buzz about Montpellier, France’s Silhouette, ahead of their full-length debut, Les Dires de l’Âme. This is built on the undeniable strength of their 2022 EP, Les retranchements (which, passing the 30-minute / seven-track mark as it did, was arguably an LP but that’s by the by). There, the sextet blended various styles, including black and post-metal, and shoegaze to create a dark and dreamy atmosphere, which oscillated between ghostly beauty and harsh, post-black fury. A lot of the credit for those moods must go to Silhouette’s dual vocalists, Ondine and Yharnam, who serve up gorgeous (female) cleans and anguished (male) post-hardcore screams, respectively. Now extending themselves into longer-form album creation, can the French group conjure up similarly enchantments on Les Dires de l’Âme?
If Les retranchements found Silhouette lost in a disturbing daydream, Les Dires de l’Âme sees them trapped in a labyrinthine nightmare of dense, swirling banks of bittersweet emotion. At times, honeyed darkness, at others crawling horrors, it’s the sort of thing you wake up from wide-eyed, shaking and moist with sweat. Evoking the hopeless misery of Amenra, combined with the gossamer, ethereal turbulence of Sylvaine’s Nova, Silhouette simply sweep you along with them on this journey. Despite running to a relatively modest 45 minutes, the sheer scale and grandeur, the epic feel, packed into this record’s short run, remind me of Hulder’s Verses in Oath. However, Les Dires de l’Âme is a significantly more diverse record, subtly shifting between, at one end of the spectrum, soaring, percussion-free laments (“L’Appel”) and huge, oppressive post-black, doom-tinged pieces (title track), at the other. At their most effective, however, Silhouette seamlessly blend these two sides of their sound, allowing them to twist into and around each other (“Catalepsie”).
Les Dires de l’Âme by Silhouette
Undoubtedly Silhouette’s greatest asset is its vocalists. On Les Dires de l’Âme, Ondine and Yharnam voices combine to create something of the magic found on Cult of Luna and Julie Christmas’ collaboration, Mariner. Although Silhouette also attracts the post-metal tag, they have relatively little in common with Cult of Luna musically (though see “Silhouette”, where a few similarities surface in the guitar work), save for that feeling that the dueling vocals of Joanne’s Persson and Christmas were able to call forth. The shades of light and dark, beauty and pain are spellbinding, even more so when the two run in parallel, with Yharnam howling over Ondine’s airy, elegant cleans (“Une Lame Éprise,” and the back end of “Dysthymie”). All this praise for the vocalists should not detract from the work of guitarists Achlys and Vyartha. Together, they deliver towering post-metal soundscapes that crush like calving glaciers, alongside blackened tremolos but also delicately melodic, picked passages, which enhance the trance-like reverie. In places, the guitar work reminds me of the most recent Downfall of Gaia (“Une Lame Éprise” and the title track), in others Alcest’s Écailles de Lune. Zhand’s drumming is similarly deft in touch, with progressive fills and restrained, almost post-rock, beats featuring as often as the metronomically precise blasts.
It’s not just the songwriting, but also the overall pacing and structuring of the album, that makes Les Dires de l’Âme the massive success it is. Silhouette’s ability to glide between harsh and delicate, or soften the blackened edges of their sound, both through Ondine’s voice but also the keen melodies of Achlys guitar, are second to none. They also made some bold writing choices, like on “Adoubée des étoiles,” which sees Yharnam take a back seat, as Ondine’s vocals are double-tracked to stunning effect over claustrophobic, brooding guitar lines. The production is also generally strong, with drum sound particularly rich, which is not always the case for post-black bands. The positioning of the vocals in the mix also plays to their strength, putting them front and centre, allowing Ondine’s voice in particular to take flight, but without totally dominating.
The cover art, depicting a shrouded soul drifting up from a broken corpse toward a dark and starry sky, is a good metaphor for what Silhouette created with Les Dires de l’Âme. A haunting experience from start to finish, it is one that could so easily have fallen prey to the twin pitfalls of over-indulgent writing and terrible production. It did not and that is hugely to Silhouette’s credit. They have crafted a hypnotic debut, which will truly be hard to top on their next outing. Don’t be surprised to see this appearing on some year-end Lists (including mine).
Rating: 4.0/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Antiq Records
Websites: silhouettebm.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/SilhouetteBM
Releases Worldwide: October 20th, 2024
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