Nom d'une pipe!

Gris, Miserere Luminis, and Sombres Forêts are bands that raise black metal to a higher level of art, music complexity and expression of convoluted emotions, adding to their music classical elements and instruments, and yet Pensées Nocturnes is treated as an avant-garde, neoclassical band. Black metal is the core of PN music, but I agree on Mr. Vaerohn experimenting a little too much with his music, and in concrete with this album.

Music transmits desperation, madness, isolation, agony, and irony. This album moves away from the two previous albums, being "Vacuum" a depressive black metal album with classical influences, and "Grotesque" is more of a black metal album in the vein of Japanese band Sigh, but "Nom d'une pipe!" is one of his kind.

Pensées Nocturnes third album (excluding Ceci est de la musique) is a monster of experimentation and weirdness only PN can achieve, and if other band had attempted to do so, they would have failed. There is still the depressive element that characterizes the band and the focus on instrumentation, following the heaviness of the previous effort, the sound of the whole work is solid, strong and menacing.

Nine songs filled with anguish and madness are enough to set yet again the standards for its own music high again. A lot of people disliked this album due to a lot of experimentation, the theme, and incorporation of an entire orchestra performing old music without any metal elements such as "Les hommes à la moustache", but man... if you can't get impressed with this composition effort you don't appreciate music that much.

And that's the whole point of this album: the music. As the title and cover art suggest this time PN is more focused on the music than on the motifs, and that's why, I believe, this album is so full with music diversity, from an almost reggae passage in "Le Marionnetiste" to the sound of an old french ballad alluding the work of Belgian singer Jacques Brel in "L'Androgyne" with help of a mesmerizing accordion and female vocals.

Nom d'une pipe! must be taken as an homage to the music that helped create Penées Nocturnes and French black metal in general, you can find some similarities with Peste Noire "L'ordure à l'état pur" in this album.
Is this Pensées Nocturnes best album? of course not, but is not bad, not bad at all, and actually is a great album.

Highlights: "Le Marionnetiste", "Le Berger", "L'Androgyne" and "La Sirène".