DEMANDE À LA POUSSIÈRE: Kintsugi (BLACK METAL): review / opinion to read on Music Waves

After Jeff Grimal, former Great Old On es guitarist and talented illustrator, left in 2019, three years later it was the turn of singer Krys Denhez (Ophe, Ecr.Linf) to desert the ranks of Demande à la Poussière, around which the band was (partly) built. From the original line-up, only Edgard Chevallier remains. While“Quiétude hostile” (2021) did not suffer from the absence of Jeff Grimal, the departure of Krys Denhez seemed more difficult to overcome, as his presence is so strong on all the albums. If the idea of replacing him with Simon Perrin (Muertissima, Anthropovore) - who is also very good but more death metal in style - was rather surprising, this third effort proves against all odds that the choice was the right one (more on that later).

In fact, these personnel changes, far from being anecdotal, ultimately have no impact on either DALP's identity or the quality of their work. In the severe and painful tradition of its glorious predecessors, “Kintsugi” continues to drill the black earth of black metal on the fringes of sludge in a chaotic, hybridization. The title refers to an ancestral Japanese technique of repairing a broken object by highlighting its cracks with gold powder. Behind this reference lies a metaphor about resilience and drawing strength from one's wounds to fight on, to face life's trials and tribulations, the fuel of an album as harsh as it is intense, teeming in its bowels with a dirty, desperate power.

The sometimes more atmospheric overtones (on opening track 'Inapte', in particular), which might suggest a form of appeasement, should not be misled: “Kintsugi” is indeed a concentrate of supplicated rage and rampant brutality, alternately shaken by pure, fiendish discharges ('Ichinawa'), crushed by a blanket of fuel oil ('La Parabole des Aveugles'), opening the floodgates to an unhealthy melancholy ('Le Sens du Vent'). Out of this charcoal lava, stirred up by a sprawling rhythm section and guitars rusted by a vicious leprosy, emerges the hallucinatory vocals of the new recruit, at ease in all registers, snarling or plaintive, always viscerally demented.

With “Kintsugi”, Demande à la Poussière confirms an inspiration as stormy as it is tense, though not devoid of a form of muted beauty, which lays bare the scars of the soul. With “Belluaires”, which his former singer has just released with Ecr.Linf, he builds a whole cemented by an equal and bubbling anger. - Official website

DEMANDE À LA POUSSIÈRE

KINTSUGI

AUTRE LABEL

BLACK METAL