JUNON: Dragging Bodies To The Fall (HARDCORE): review / opinion to read on Music Waves

A quick reminder. General Lee scuttled itself shortly after "Knives Out, Everybody!" (2015) to become Junon. In 2021, "The Shadows Lengthen" sealed this new departure, a frankly promising EP whose follow-up many were eagerly awaiting. Here it is at last.

Packaged by the indispensable Francis Caste (who needs no introduction) at Sainte Marthe Studios, "Dragging Bodies To The Fall" is, let's face it, the album that admirers of the band have been hoping would come to fruition. However, it would be wrong to claim that the Nantes-based band have not evolved since their first little galop d'essai. Whereas this one saw them sculpting a more post-rock expression than in the days of General Lee, its successor unexpectedly turns out to be far more brutal, a reservoir of anger as sticky as it is desperate.

The band's post-hardcore roots more than surface on songs that roar with punishing blackness. Listening to them, you can tell that the guys aren't doing much better. It has to be said that the spectacle currently offered by humanity does not lend itself to joy and insouciance. "Dragging Bodies To The Fall" takes its cue from the impending apocalypse looming over our societies. With vocals that rasp and howl as if there were no tomorrow, guitars gnawed by a depressing melancholy, and a rhythm section trapped in a concrete gangue, all the musicians appear to be in unison with this painful inexorability.

Hope and light are totally rejected from an album written in black ink. There is, however, a form of beauty, as 'Segue 1 - The Final Voyage' illustrates from the outset, but it remains harsh throughout, cast in a mineral hardness. Even a track like 'Out Of Suffering', whose premise seems to herald a (relatively) lighter breeze, despite more post-metal aspects, sinks into a dark vat. The atmosphere is thus extremely heavy and vitiated ('Caught In Hypocrisy Loops' is sheared off by timid flashes of lightning).

It becomes even more so on the radical 'Another Bar To Your Cage', a downright hardcore spit. But then again, nothing is all black and white, as Junon always know how to aerate their message, digging salvific cracks from which pale glimmers of light flow. At the end of this painful path stands the enormous (in every respect) 'Halo Of Lies', which after scouring a rough and abrasive land mutates into a ghostly wandering on the edge of ambient before dying in a supplicated crash.

More than the addition of scattered tracks, "Dragging Bodies To The Fall" erects an indivisible block, painting a picture of an (in)humanity consumed by mortifying impulses. In so doing, Junon has not only made a comeback, but also released its first true cry of hatred. - Official website

JUNON

DRAGGING BODIES TO THE FALL

AUTRE LABEL

HARDCORE