Ausserwelt

Funnily this album by French sludge doomsters Year Of No Light reminds me of how much I miss early Nadja before that band started parodying itself with bombastic remakes of earlier material. YONL may not be very original and the music might be more lumbering and repetitive than inspiring but their style is very solid and meaty, covering both ends of their sound spectrum with deep and robust thunder-drums, grinding bass and howling siren guitars high in the far distance. True, these guys don't do "melodic" at all well but maybe that's not their intent, the aim instead being to fully immerse listeners in a vast and sprawling soundscape panorama that lifts them onto another plane of consciousness and existence that would otherwise remain out of reach on the material plane.

Without a doubt the central pieces on "Ausserwelt" are the two "Perséphone" tracks which perhaps (both tracks are instrumental pieces, as is the rest of the album) trace the kidnapping of Perséphone by Hades and her descent into his kingdom, and her ascension back onto Earth respectively. Both are very expansive tracks in atmosphere and structure with an emphasis on long droning crumbly-raw guitar tones, slow rhythms and repetition of riffs and motifs. Extended guitar feedback tones draw your attention to vast interior spaces that go on and on forever, faster than the speed of light, as far as one's inner eye can see. It may be a desolate and empty-looking universe yet beneath the blankness is the potential for new worlds to arise. The second track "Perséphone (Coré)" seems to be a more positive, focused and structured track with powerful drumwork, swooping bass chord sequences and more guitar drones squealing up to the heavens.

Admittedly the remaining tracks are little different in structure, sound or speed: if the "Perséphone" tracks carved out their particular part of YONL's sonic universe, then the rest of "Ausserwelt" explore details of areas already well-trodden and discover new ways of experiencing them. The music ranges from martial to solemn and sorrowing, and while the territory feels familiar to me as a long-time doom metal fan, reconnecting with it through YONL's fusion of sludge, doom and post-metal is a novel experience for me.

If you love heavy and transcendental sound art with sludge, doom and post-metal influences, and which fills your mind with cosmic trance experiences, then this album will fill your appetite.

"Post-Metal" (or whatever similar terms) is always a genre name I've found off-putting whenever I hear a band described as such. Why not atmospheric metal? Never the less, Year of No Light's "Ausserwelt" does a spectacular job of demonstrating exactly what the genre name implies.

For those familiar with the more ambient or cinematic aspects of the instrumental metal scene, Ausserwelt will be of a familiar style from the very beginning of the album, without seeming derivative of others within their genre. Probably the most impressive aspect of the album is the absolutely massive sound that the tracks have: with the utterly crushing sludge-like riffs on the two part Persephone, or the dreary drones of album closer, Abbesse (a personal favorite track: particularly the drum patterns that occur around 37:00 and on into the album), the sound of Year of No Light never fails to be utterly massive.

The only thing that can be potentially problematic for the album is that depending on the listener, the 48 minutes can seem to blend together into a single song. This can be taken to be good or bad depending on the listener: the overall cohesiveness and very thematically driven style is clear throughout the album definitely defines the signature sound of Year of no Light; but if one finds themselves disinterested early on the album can seem to drag as it focuses heavily on elements such as pounding drums, sludgy riffs, and the massive thrills of e-bow and keys.

As a final point, I would like to momentarily touch on the positively beautiful cover art for the album. The stark and elegant tones of black, silver, and gray do an excellent job of visualizing the dreary but elegant style of the music.

Overall, Year of No Light's effort Ausserwelt is definitely something that anyone who enjoys massive sounding, cinematic metal should consider giving a full and honest listen.

Wasn't expecting this! YoNL's demo way back when was decent but ultimately nothing all that special, but Aussenweltl, well. Quite the beast, and while it isn't perfect it's quite a progression from the older days of badly recorded post-metal tunes that was their demo.

It's still not the most original thing, but it is seriously cool anyway. Gone are the fairly standard slow-but-not-really-sludge-or-doom riffs, and in place is a constantly occulted, hugely layered and blurry wall of sound that ranges from pleasant, blurry Mogwai fear Satan-isms to cosmic Angelic Process noise with the occaisonal Neurosis-y moment thrown in. Lots of ebows, lots of delay pedals, and plenty of neurosis loving tom work; sure, this isn't the craziest, freshest sound around but at the end of the day it sounds like a huge symphony of sad guitars, so naturally I'm going to love the shit out of it.

Yeah, those looking for metal here are going to be seriously bummed; there's a few blasts around the place, there's maybe one or two actual doom riffs. Only barely metal though. Persephone II's a good enough description of the general YoNL approach; the dudes get a bunch of the most epic post-rock climaxes they can write and just throw them together into one long, occaisonally pretty, occaisonally harrowing, always very noisy mix. Speaking of the mix, it's brilliant; very loud and those hoping for much respite will be disappointed by the production job, it's not polished but the tones and levels are all set brilliantly, the band sounds tight and you really do get the impression that this band live would absolutely destroy your eardrums. Almost as much as Sunn you really get the feeling here that 'maximum volume delivers maximum results'- currently sitting in my room with headphones cranked and while it sounds great far better results would be achieved by spinning this album on a truly massive sound system and letting the audio rattle your lungs about.

Ausserwelt is good, very good even, and while it's the first drone doom/post-whatever album I've heard for a while that's really made my dick hard it isn't quite perfect. The tendency of YoNL to favour their massive, blurry, effect laden approach over, you know, actually playing lines/riffs etc. works well for a while but after a while you do start to yearn for a few actual riffs (hard to call those really slow chord progressions "riffs") to get your teeth into and get your neck hurting, or perhaps for a surprising clean arpeggiated passage to come out of nowhere and break your heart, for something different, I guess. The breakdown in Heirophante comes close except that the bass and spacious drum line is buried under an avalanche of guitar noise- still sounds great, but why not creep the noise in or do a terrace dynamic for the final fast section? Or make us shit our pants with a Like Herod-style moment- just for something different, you know?

I nitpick, though. Ultimately I really, really enjoyed this record precisely for what it is- a loud, constant wall of effect pedals, pounding drums and a venus-dense atmosphere. Powerful and beautiful, occaisonally quite nasty but always a very enjoyable listen, Ausserwelt is a really, really good album that's well worth your time.

When it comes to the "post-" styles of music, I've strangely never been able to get into the subset that merges with my favorite genre, metal. Post rock, I love. I could listen to God is an Astronaut or Gifts from Enola or Up-C Down-C Blurbbity Bluh Bluckity all day and never get tired of it. Now if you chuck some Isis into the mix? Suddenly my interest is lost. The juxtaposition of metallic aggression with the quiet atmosphere never really sat well with me. It was great in theory, but the execution was always fairly shit. Keeping this in mind, France's Year of No Light is a bit of an anomaly in my listening cycle. MA lists their genre as "sludge/drone doom metal", but really I can't think of any other way to outline post metal than this. Yeah, there's some sludginess, there's some doominess, but the dynamics, structure, and overall attitude of Ausserwelt is deeply rooted in the post rock ideal.

For example, the opening track, "Perséphone I", is based around the Explosions in the Sky template of "quiet... LOUD" songwriting. There are two very long and drawn out buildups that lead to explosive climaxes. The same can be said about most of the tracks, but the what separates Year of No Light from the heavier post rock bands like Gifts from Enloa lies in the almost funeral doomesque guitar work. "Perséphone II" and "Hiérophante" really showcase that difference. A majority of the record is taken up by this ultra slow, apocalyptic, monolithic riffing underneath dissonant, haunting melodies with a strong emphasis on dynamics. Frankly, it works fantastically. It doesn't try too hard to throw in a faster metallic riffing section anywhere because I think the band knows that what they're doing works very well already, and that trying to spice it up with something so ill fitting will only be detrimental. This predictable build and release style should be old news by now, but the band does it so well it doesn't matter. It's the same reason I don't scoff at each new Cannibal Corpse record. Yeah, sure it's probably going to sound like the last six records but they all slayed. Why fix what isn't broken? What they've got here conveys crushing despair and futility so well that basically any change will just screw up what they've got going on. The only issue I have with the Ausserwelt is that it's a bit samey at times. Sure the first track is calmer and the last is the most intense and epic, but the lion's share of the music laid out here is pretty interchangeable. Still, if you wish there was a bit more Tyranny or Wormphlegm in your Mogwai, this is definitely a good place to turn. Very healthily doomy, with a post what-have-you attitude.

I've been consistently impressed by the French metal scene since 2008, with some amazing things coming from the country (Gojira and Eryn Non Dae come first to my mind), with only Alcest being a minor disappointment.

Their style is described on Encyclopedia Metallum as sludge/drone doom. I would have called it post-doom, but either formula adds up to the same thing: heavy, sludgy, slow, organically-developing songs. Four of them to be precise, with a total runtime over 47 minutes.

The album is entirely instrumental, as many post-metal and drone doom bands tend toward vocal minimalism. But despite that self-imposed handicap, the music is emotionally involving and extremely well-written. The emotions touched on are what you might expect from a band called Year of No Light, so it's dark, but that heavy sludge makes it feel good to listen to nonetheless. The first half of the album is just what you'd expect from the sludge/drone/post-doom formula, and it's done well. But the second half gets even better. "Hiérophante" has a section where all the instruments go faster just to mix things up, and album closer "Abbesse" has a section where only the drums go faster while the rest is moving slow. The results are as good as you might expect.

This is highly capable sludge/drone/post-doom. I can't name any other bands that occupy that niche, but I can't imagine any of them do it any better than Year of No Light. It's emotional and engaging, even without vocals, and hangs together perfectly as an album, with a fair measure of experimentation. Now if they could just experiment a little bit more, and throw in some good vocals now and then, they could record a perfect album.

Adapted from http://fullmetalattorney.blogspot.com/