Album review: Celeste – Assassine(s)

French metallers Celeste are jacks (or should that be Jacques?) of all trades as far as metal is concerned. Having started out 15 years ago on a quest for the apotheosis of brutality, nowadays they’ve taken to creating heaviness through atmosphere, suffusing thick layers of post-metal with hardcore grit and blackening the edges. Everything they’re best at is put on show here on their sixth album, where grace and menace collide and create beautiful sonic explosions.

Even if all they set out to do was to spend 40 minutes building staggering walls of sound, Assassine(s) would still provide a satisfying enough listen. There’s a dark beauty to be found in the trembling, almost shoegaze-like guitar forming the backbone of Nonchalantes de beauté, while the melodic post-metal of Elle se répète froidement is bolstered by thunderous drumming that could masquerade as rapid machine gun fire (and Antoine Royer’s sticksmanship is consistently astonishing throughout this record).

However, Celeste are not a band that are content with settling, and this record sparkles when it’s at its most surprising. The thrumming hardcore guitar at the foundations of De tes yeux bleus is the sort of sound a 2010s metalcore band would happily pinch for a breakdown, but that’s half of what makes it so interesting beyond its capacity to bruise. It’s the instrumental (A) that’s the most radical, opening with the pounding of a pop-esque electronic drum before spiralling from slow-burning sludge that intensifies with a seismic drum pattern. It’s got no right to work as well as it does, especially for the unexpectedness of some of the sounds, but it’s testament to to their eye for continual evolution, even after a decade and a half of making music.

Assassine(s) is heavy in a mulitiplicity of ways, but not in a way that threatens to rip a listener’s face off, rather peeling the skin from the bone slowly. It commands attention but is never impenetrable, grandiose but never in an obnoxious way, and never fails to reward whoever explores it.

Verdict: 4/5

For fans of: Converge, Alcest, Wiegedood

Assassine(s) is out now via Nuclear Blast