Wandering wounded for a decade and a half before crossing over, our entity has bled of its ichor and seethed its revenge to the point of being willed back to life solely for the sake of mayhemic discord. Fermenting in slow transcendence from mortified flesh to wrathful geist Quebecois avant-black metal trio Mêlée des Aurores returns an amorphous swarm of unearthly belligerence as they suffocate the senses with unknowable horrors on this long-awaited full-length album. A work of semi-improvised dissonant monstrosity, reeling out of control in its tirade of blinded destruction ‘Aube Cannibale‘ is an unwaking nightmare drain set upon the unwitting public without warning. There is yet a psychedelic serpentine art to their scathing brimstone whipping and cauldron-shaped longform movements herein, a surrealistic intellect which lets loose one explosive experiment at a time without a mind for controlling the outcome beyond emphasizing the rattle of ivory keys and shattered wood as they nuke their orchestral chamber with unreal malevolence.

Mêlée des Aurores technically formed back in 2002 between vocalist/guitarist Blanc-Feu and drummer Cadavre who’d worked together in black metal bands Culte d’Ébola and the slightly better known Chasse-Galerie with bassist Matrak Tveskaeg soon joining the band by the time their first mLP (‘Errances‘, 2010) released several years later. In that age of atmospheric black metal emphasis and exploration it was a searching and shambling post-black infused beast they’d created. Wounded and increasingly desperate per its somewhat folken melodic dirges the relatively short ~24 minute run of that first release wasn’t entirely typical of Quebecois black metal of the time but their work was also not the most standout side-project to have arisen within that period. Their iteration upon that sound for a split with Chasse-Galerie (2014) successfully crossed wires between complex pieces writ for more than two guitars and introduced us to Blanc-Feu‘s vocal cadence as a malevolent force though the style was yet heroically melodic and not the shower of dissonant obsidian shards which we find on ‘Aube Cannibale‘.

Thy disturbed orchestra, of pain and wrath. — The main pieces which strike most profoundly as we pierce through ‘Aube Cannibale‘ are its ~9-10 minute suites, each of which focuses on a singular point of imagery and crafts an enormous columnar experience from what are apparently partially improvised movements under guidance of practiced shaping. Opener “Incubation” doesn’t entirely show its cards in this regard as the buried underground tonality of the piece gears up its brittle sepia-toned rattle and bursts through beyond the first minute, there is an immediate strike of dramatic composure to this point of entry as they hum and jangle along lead by the two main guitar pieces sliding between their black metal theatrics into the glassy hum of the keys, ripping blasts, and an intense inward-striking main progression. The gritted and gristle-ripping morbidity of Portal is in their minds as this possessed machine goes on whirring underground as the piece spends over half of its length descending into a depth where its desiccated voice and heated pace can stress their comorbid ails. I’d found “Incubation” satisfyingly nauseating, a vile and wrathful display which’d been thrilling in its disgusted vocal tone and reeling-hard movement to the point of a traumatic first listen, having expected something much more sweetly atmospheric from Mêlée des Aurores since there’d been little warning of this direction back in 2014.

“Soleil des méduses” has a more thrashing, classicist beat to some of its sped movements swerving its riffs at a jogging quick pace before piano striking and the screaming of dissonant leads create havoc atop. In most ways they’ve brute-forced this scattered minimal traipsing across the piano which develops in the fourth minute in a way which is unlike the usual disso-black tendency, a primal but potentially sophisticated interjection into a song which keeps its thrashing forth bolts of black lightning coming for most of its extended duration. Much as the opener was a great point of ominous intrigue I’d found this second piece the real body and blood of the full listen to start, the full embodiment of this brash zombified black metal orchestra pit brawl. It doesn’t quite touch the insight of Thantifaxath at first but there are a few moments which resound with similarly eerie, unpredictable depth in concerted layers and sure, even if it doesn’t seem every convergence was intentional beyond in the moment instinct in a few cases.

The experimental, abrupt nature of this work offers chasms to get lost in and jagged cliffs to slide off into treachery. As we press on through each ~19 or so minute side of this album the avant-garde worming of the riffs and the greater tumultuous spiritus of the record comes with one of my favored pieces of the lot, “Ignitus”, with its dual-trailing contrapuntal mutations and chaotic speed but we get the most clear scent of the odd way these folks have implemented piano/keyboards and unorthodox instrumentation such as contrabass on the exceptional closer “L’éternel retour”. It is at once the most psychedelically charged song on the record due to the tremolo effect upon the riffs and the most tuneful thanks to its early melodic arc and the obsessively swaying motions in its second half. This is a surprisingly motivated and prescient endpoint for the full listen and sure, even if it just sort of ends after caterwauling in place for a while, howling in pain before suddenly going quiet and shattering to the ground. The whole of the full listen appears sleek and often riveting for the strikes of sulphureous lightning and distorted view it presents, never resting on a point of pleasure so long that it might wear out or become too profound next to the suffering transformation which it embodies at every turn.

A ritual enacted and a dimly lit corpse consumed, there’d been no barrier between my senses and the fraught violence and suffering available to ‘Aube Cannibale‘ as its weirding hex melted through both vigorous and intoxicating works and all of which I’d found profound even when it’d become obviate that these were partially improvised and purely felt-through sermons at times. In fact it was all the more impressive how this record came together without having one hundred perfect of its notes dialed in since it’d all felt entirely in place as each piece became familiar, warranting a couple dozen listens before I could be bothered to put the record down and begin analyzing its innards and their meaning. Throw in a dark and expressive cover artwork and a richly layered and detailed sound with plenty of emergent moments accounted for and I’d done well to connect with this avant-garde but not unknowable force of a recording. A high recommendation.

Mêlée des Aurores – Aube cannibale CD

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