ALBUM REVIEW: Consolamentum – Year Of No Light

Hailing from Bordeaux, France and currently signed to Pelagic Records, post metal troupe YEAR OF NO LIGHT are celebrating their 20th anniversary this year and in celebration, not only are they releasing their latest full length Consolamentum but a wooden box containing all five studio albums as well as various EPs and splits on vinyl. Consolamentum itself is a mammoth undertaking, sprawling across its 55-minute runtime. It’s often quite an unsettling listen, plumbing the depths before coming up for air in the final minutes of its longform pieces.

Opener Objuration spends its first few minutes in an ambient haze; it’s a disquieting listen initially, despite its calmness. This is soon subsumed by a sludgy riff and synths that trudge slowly forwards, creating a tense, suffocating atmosphere. The song slowly unfurls over its 12minutes, introducing new motifs and permutations on the central riff. It’s only in the final few minutes that there’s any release for the tension built throughout, but this too is short lived as the corrosive sludge is reintroduced.

Alétheia is a softer, more introspective and mysterious piece in its opening half, though moving into a churning maelstrom after this. Interdit Aux Vivants, Aux Morts Et Aux Chiens once more drags you back into the mire, a monolithic, minimalist guitar line that CONAN might pen providing a gruelling, drudging pace. As the piece progresses though, the band inject elements of yearning melodicism and it’s truly goosebump-inducing as it reaches its zenith. 

Throughout Consolamentum there’s always tension and release. Closer Came, for instance, opens with calming synths that allow the previous four songs to soak in at least a little. Even when guitars are introduced a short way into the song, it isn’t brash or loud but is instead a gradual build-up. The pounding, almost militaristic drums that appear around the four-minute mark underscore lush synth instrumentation that’s more like a space odyssey than a conventional song. The band could easily stay in this vein until the end, but they throw one more curveball a few minutes later with blast beats, though the drums are quieter here under the swelling, almost dissonant synths. By the time the song culminates in a sludgy riff, it’s like things have come full circle and it fades away slowly to the chiming of bells. 

Some bands spend their entire careers seeking to write the kind of music that can make time stand still, even just for a song, but on Consolamentum, YEAR OF NO LIGHT deliver five of them in a row. This is music to get lost in; to sit back and be washed away by its ebb and flow and to feel every moment, every emotion the band conjure across the album.

This isn’t immediate, catchy listening by any stretch and that works in its favour. Instead, it rewards patience, allowing the songs to unfold before you and repeat listens to capture more of its densely layered, painstakingly constructed movements. Across the five songs that make up Consolamentum, YEAR OF NO LIGHT prove once more why they’re one of the preeminent bands in post metal and why they’ve been rewarded with such longevity and adoration. 

Rating: 8/10

Consolamentum is set for release on July 2nd via Pelagic Records.

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