Par un sourire

Let me start by saying this is by no means a bad album, it just gets a bit boring and repetitive after a while. I'll start with the positives. The musicianship is solid but not to complex. It's actually above average for depressive black metal. The production is reasonably fuzzy, but it creates a cold and bleak atmosphere. The vocals are mostly made up of deranged howls and screams with a few standard black metal rasps thrown in for good measure. The over all atmosphere of this album bleak and depressing, but there are slight glimmers of hope in the music and the lyrics.

The guitar is relatively simple and normally play at slow to mid pace. The drum are also simple and blend in with the guitar very well. Vocals like the ones on this album are often annoying, but the psychotic scream are well executed and make the album even more depressing. The bass is virtually non existent. You can hardly tell that it's there at all, but (imo) bass isn't that important in black metal anyway.

Now on to the negatives. After listening to this album for a while it starts to get boring and repetitive, which isn't unusual for depressive black metal. All the songs start to sound the same. The same sort of droning riffs are played repeatedly through every song. The vocal also start to get boring as well. The screams seam to all sound exactly the same and the pitch is so high that it sometimes hurts my ears. Unfortunately it's the same with the drums. They just repeat them selves over and over again until the end of the album.

Over all this is an okay album. It's worth a few listen, but after that it starts to become boring.

Best tracks: Tu es inscrite dans les lignes du plafond (Histoire d' Isabelle partie une), Lebenskraft.

Worst tracks: Tu es inscrite dans les yeux que j'aime (Histoire d' Isabelle partie deux), Mit einem Lächeln.

The first thing, that attracts positive attention, are the names of the songs, as they indicate that Par Un Sourire seems to be a conceptual record. Due to the lack of lyrics I can not really confirm that, but I want to lay this as a fundament for the review.

The standard structure of a dsbm song should be well known, but to alleviate the comprehension of the review, I will now give a short overview. Most of the songs are build out of 1-3 long-drawn riffs, the vocals are ranging from harsh growls to incomprehensible screams and there aren’t really any surprises in the structures. When you take this and combine that with a bad production and maybe some samples you will receive a standard dsbm record.

Nathaenael didn’t really change anything here, although the only songs that use samples are the start/end song and the production is really well done, although it still maintains the needed rawness. The vocals are clearly incomprehensible on the whole record, but that really fits the atmosphere in my ears, and I think good comprehensible vocals would have been counterproductive here.

If you compare Par Un Sourire with the ordinary dsbm record you’ll see, that it does not really accommodate more riffs, as no song exceeds the three riff rule I mentioned, same goes for the songparts. What clearly is different, is the quality of those riffs, as they are quite catchy and sparkling. Same goes for the drums, which may not stand out if you see the whole metal scene, but in terms of dsbm they are really more vivid and better staged than normal.

The compositions seem to be narrative, which would underline the thought of the conceptual record. While the first and the last song are using samples of a young lady, which talks about her pain and suffering in this world, the other songs seem to handle an inner war. This could be indicated through songtitles as Wieder Allein, Freiheit or Lebenskraft. The general, depressive atmosphere, is accomplished by a glimpse of hope in each of these songs, as you might hear in the song Freiheit where a shriek guitar melodie seems to set one of those inner wars to music.

Although the songs seem to have those narrative structure, the principle of 1-3 riffs per song still is a big problem, as they add some lenghts in the course of the record. The same could be said about the vocals, which really fit the atmosphere, but due to the monotony of style they lack variation. The last point of criticism are the transitions between the several parts of the songs, as they sometimes seem to be enforced or uncompromisingly bumpy. One of these kind can be found in Wieder Allein as the whole song fades out, breathes through for about two seconds and then starts with the outro, which then ends abruptly after a short while. This might be a stylistic element though, at least in the first and/or last song, where this silence should maybe set the focus on the samples.

Conclusion:


Par Un Sourire is a well done record, that is above average in terms of dsbm. It is in fact such a good record, that I would say it clearly surpasses Nathanaels main project Thränenkind without a problem. The record does accommodate really good riffs, which sometimes reflect the main concept of the song nearly verbally (like you can hear in the last song). Some other points add something negative and others again are a matter of taste, like the incomprehensible vocals.
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nilgoun - http://threnodies.com