À l'âme enflammée, l'äme constellée...

The magnitude of inspiration and effort present upon this release is unequaled in recent memory. Our esteemed artists here, Neptune and Icare, have set themselves upon a journey towards the Numinous through soul-levitating, mystical agonies of sound and word. Alchemic, ethereal, unworldly. A voyage towards the ineffable realms of blinding incandescence awaiting somewhere beyond the edge of mortal horizons. Visionary, epochal, singular. Torturous and exalting at once, they have achieved a monumental task of Art - the closest any musical creation has come to reaching spiritual perfection since the days of Renaissance polyphony. They are the Palestrina and Lassus of 21st century music, indubitably, implacably. A work for the ages, timelessly spreading effulgent sonorous wings upon the dreaming mind. The mortifying, quaking, transpiercing hierophany of the Absolute in human-conceived tune. Its superability is highly dubious, what more can there possibly be conquered through the Art of music-making?

Les Forges inaugurates the record with sharp aplomb, “we are the dawning of an assassin nightfall, we come carrying nebulae and suns”, Icare’s tormenting voice exalting towards vastnesses beyond the world. “We cast our atramentous dreams of shadow pearls upon a desert of flame which dances evermore.” The poetry of the decadent age is rekindled, lost centuries are conjured back. Acoustic strings merge with electric blizzards to carry the hallowed verse towards deeper agonies of visionary height - of fog-beset continents, of secret treasures, of deleterious sorrows. The heart gushes forth with luminous bleedings, it consumes as a devouring flame. Alchemies of light are absconding all shadows, they transmute even the world’s filth. The culmination and completion of the piece is a tearing rumination on mankind - “O wearied humanity, succumbed such as a voiceless flame, have you devoured your dreams?”

Igneus is a blazing euphoria, the experience of mystical self-immolation. Icare’s broken voice is evoking boundless fire, a vision of luminous dissolutions into aethers beyond the stars. The instrumentation is nebulous, aching, hammering, an ecstatic bombination of electric strings set to devour. It culminates into an invocation of angels of fire and grows silently contemplative with acoustic chords that are lost in strange infinity.

Seizieme priere is a prophecy of stellar asphyxiation, a combination of the acoustic and the electric rising in supernal cavalcade towards the unreachable hollows of the skies. “Decimated soul, corroded, your heart stains the anchor of your life, your masks of sorrow have carried away hope to the same ruins as your dreams”. It speaks “to the inflamed soul, the constellated soul who answers to deserts and ashes”, a final alchemy of the loving heart which dies in us all.

Une epitaphe de suie comes with the arpeggios of rainfall, it washes over the battered ruins of the world. It sighs of hope on pale days with rays of indifference, it weeps strangely without afflicting miseries. It howls of undulating fire, and of dancing constellations, and of sands and gold. Long silent moments, carried by silent strings and distant chanting. “We will be untied of everything and flourishing, lost between dawns and stars we shall take flight.”