Brouillard

Among the so-called atmospheric black metal niche that got so popular since 2010's, Brouillard is an act that is known for releasing the same ongoing track over and over... for real. The project, formed by an unknown French composer/musician (also founder of the independent label Transcendance), also member of Sphere, Transcending Rites and J'ai si froid... (now known as Vertige), released so far six full-length releases and a few EPs/splits composed of the same epnoymous titled track re-done over and over since its formation. Moreover, all of such releases are obsessed with autumnal/wintry landscapes drenched in thick fog, with full moons high in the sky or representing the founder walking through such desolate, wet spots far from civilization and close to tall, snow-covered mountains: the last element contradicts a bit the project's imagery, which hails from Labastidette, a French town of barely 3000 people that's not far from the Pyrenees, but is itself at a relatively low altitude, just 185 meters above sea level.

Since all albums and tracks have the same title, this album may as well be named Brouillard no. 2, and so far it's also the longest of the lot, clocking a full 70 minutes. The first track starts with roughly two minutes of beatless synth harmonies with choir/phased string drones and background wind, before launching into a blast-beating assault replicating the previous section's two-chord structures with distant guitar and vocal shrieking: points of reference include Paysage d'Hiver and Darkspace, but also ColdWorld, Midnight Odyssey and Crow Black Sky, especially when the riff evolves adding progressively modal harmonies from the sixth minute on, evoking epic qualities to an already majestic platter. Easily the best of all.

The second track starts with a minimal, semitone-change arpeggio, over which a slower, ballad-like full-scale arrangement is added after four measures. Around the eight minute, the pacing drops temporarily, only to return with more speed and minor-key dissonance and groovy palm-muting, but compared to the first one, this one overall sounds more like lazier filler. The third one is a shorter 4-minutes interlude with a few notes, so it's pretty ignorable. The fourth one is a 26-minutes mammoth summing up the previous material with more tempo changes and attempts at melodic variation (albeit in a minimal-focused way).

Like many sabotaged-sounding ambient/black metal releases, production is far from accessible. Guitars and keyboards are in the front, while bass, vocals and drum programming are drowned in the mix. Most of the instruments feature squashed dynamics and are not intense at all, having low sonic punch and focusing instead in mid-range frequencies, resulting in a release that's aimed to sound more claustrophobic than nature-oriented, due also to the scarcity of reverb. All the three lengthy tracks end with an ambient-like coda with solo synths or faint clean guitar arpeggios.

I can't really say to be a fan of such insular, fundamentally lazy forms of atmospheric black metal, and Brouillard is no master in this. So far, I have heard no dud from the project, but I haven't found something that can get me really hooked as well. All these albums flow one after another, to the point they blur into the same song over and over (which, to an extent, they are), and reveal their excessive length if the listener is just focused on the listening, without doing anything else.