La mort du soleil

I don't even know what to call this musical direction that Gris and Sombres Forêts started down on their Miserere Luminis collaboration. It's some sort of weird atmospheric classical avant-garde depressive post-black metal thing I suppose, but whatever it's supposed to be it was done better on that collaboration than on either project's respective followups. And while they did take a good while to compose and release his part, Annatar Sombres Forêts hit first with La mort du soleil. It's an album that does have the same emotional inspiration that Miserere Luminis did, but this time it's much more boring.

I wouldn't blame anyone saying that this isn't even black metal. The music sounds so far removed from the genre that I'm not certain myself. The riffs are soft sounding and post-rockish. It's not quite the same as the lighter moments of actual post-metal like Isis or Cult of Luna, but the similarities are there aside from there being no sludge influence. Now that really isn't a problem in and of itself, but the execution of this sound leaves a lot to be desired. There are some cool sounding guitar melodies thrown in, especially on the early parts of "Brumes", and there's a lot of cool echoy effects that Annatar does with the occasional use of a bow on the guitar. But all these elements are mixed into these long songs that are really slow paced. It just feels like a chore to listen to.

The airy atmosphere of this album mixed with the slow tempo are just too much. As clichéd as this statement is, this is an album that makes me want to fall asleep. For music of this style to work, there needs to be some sort of buildup leading toward a cathartic sounding crescendo or some kind of explosive twist in the songs. La mort du soleil doesn't feature either of those things well, and this is not an album whose songs can carry themselves on riffs (because there are none). The idea is still cool, but this was done way better by Annatar with the help of the guys in Gris on Miserere Luminis. Go listen to that instead.