
vote
7.0
- Bands:
JOURS PALES - Duration: 00:57:54
- Available from: 05/12/2025
- Label:
-
Les Acteurs De L'Ombre Productions
Streaming not yet available
Fourth album in five years of life for the creature of Spellbound (An Norvys, Aorlhac, ex Asphodèle, ex Hellböözer, ex Towersound), which certainly deserves the credit of having created a recognizable sound despite starting from now consolidated ingredients.
From the beginning, the proposal of Jours Pâles is linked to an atmospheric black metal whose harshness is mitigated by a singing in French which increases the melancholy, generated by sounds as cold and dark as the topics covered.
If in the first three albums the path of the human soul was analyzed from its birth to its dissolution, these new tracks explore the themes of loss and desperation, focusing on the relationship with his daughter Aldérica: a delicate theme, which however does not soften the tones of the transalpine artist's music at all.
The songs of “Résonances”, in fact, do not give up the usual melodic rate but are on average more aggressive than in the past, built on guitars that create riffs and solos (the role of soloist is entrusted once again to SD Ramirez of the Georgian Psychonaut 4) close to classic metal, placed in the foreground by a rather dense and direct production, with Florian (Spellbound's real name) proving to be a singer capable of expressing himself on different registers, always proving effective with both clean vocals and growls.
In an album that is rather homogeneous in terms of mood, it is in the eleven minutes of “Une Splendeur Devenue Terne” that all these elements reach an optimal balance, so much so as to be a sort of compendium of the most successful moments of the three previous albums, but what also stands out are “L'Essentialité Du Frisson”, in which the accordion of Pereg Ar Bagol of Boisson Divine gives a folk touch, a decidedly new element for the transalpines, and the introspective atmospheres of “La Plus Belles Des Saisons”.
The choice to propose three instrumental pieces is not fully convincing, among which “Incommensurable (Chanson Pour Aldérica II)” stands out for its melancholic guitar lines, while the prog derivatives of “La Frontière Entre Nous Et Le Néant” appear out of context.
With “Résonances” Spellbound confirms himself as a musician capable of writing profound and personal music, always poised between desperation and hope, as few in the black metal field know how to do: probably a shorter duration would have allowed the best ideas to be condensed by setting aside some less focused episodes, but in general the inspiration that led to the birth of this project does not yet seem to have run out.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
