Style: Progressive Black Metal (mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Enslaved, Ihsahn, Borknagar
Review by: Andy
Country: Switzerland
Release date: 2 November, 2022
I claimed Dans la Vallée des Astres from the pile as mine to review just a couple minutes into the thing without checking the runtime or determining whether or not I even liked it. The album begins with strange, glitchy electronica, promising some experimenting perhaps outside of the typical metal scope, and the first track, “Fracture,” continued with a neat psychedelic build. But unfortunately, the life of an underpaid metal reviewer is a rough one; beyond listening to Zach’s whining that I underrate everything I touch (I have the opposite effect as Midas one could say) and routinely getting chained in our office’s basement for my taste in Obsidious, I also have to listen to everything I claim multiple times over, interrupting my typical listening habits. Often, this task highlights an album’s flaws, and that is no different on Switzerland’s Collapse Astral’s debut. The review cycle is vicious and takes no prisoners.
The main problem augmented on multiple listens of Dans la Vallée des Astres is its bloat: the album length crosses over the dangerous hour line, but more frustrating issues peer out with extra, repetitive minutes in nearly every song. “Sur le Flot des Abysses” spends its first few minutes mindlessly sitting still, like Zach when I take needless shots at him, and when the “buildup” and crescendo finally peak, the payoff in growls and blasts isn’t worth the entrance fee. Though, the production holds back that dam-breaking moment more than the songwriting as the clean guitars feel flaccid and the drums that sound like they were recorded through a wall further compound into a feeling of hollowness. None of these problems are outright egregious, mind you, but they reek of being a debut.
Not all is lost, though, because the band does try to push some envelopes for the sake of progressiveness. The dreamy, chanted clean vocals greatly increase the atmospheric possibilities the band so desperately tries to forge; moreover, they texturally fit in with the slightly dissonant riffs and disconcerting rhythms of tracks like “Ceux au Sang d’Azur” and “Déluge,” the latter of which boasts nice horn synth textures and a sufficiently tasty low-end. Of course, the band’s meandering songwriting often loses track of these good ideas, but they almost always stumble back into them, indicating to me that they do have a good ear for melody-writing and just need to refine their delivery.
And that leads us to the last two tracks, “La Grande Cité de Marbre,” the clear highlight, and “Splendeur du Vide,” the album’s epic and initial song which caught my attention. While many other songs seemed to lack an idea of where they were headed until they arrived, “La Grande Cité de Marbre” confidently strides forward, and when the track really breaks open around four minutes in, it’s glorious. However, the finale is the most meandering and boring song of them all. Practically nothing happens throughout its fifteen minutes, and as much as I wanted to love it as a prog fan with a long song fetish, nothing stuck. Perhaps cutting out the track entirely would have both served to make Dans la Vallée des Astres a more approachable length and strengthened the overall quality of goods.
While I sound remarkably disappointed by Collapse Astral throughout this review, perhaps I’m being too harsh and am just jaded with new music overall. The band shows a wealth of talent, particularly in the more jagged, rhythmic black metal parts, and the synth work, too, stands out above a sea of similar bands. With a tighter product and better production, Collapse Astral have the start of something more worth recommending.
Recommended tracks: Fracture, La Grande Cité de Marbre
You may also like: Lunar, Fliege, Xenoglyph
Final verdict: 5/10
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Official Website | YouTube | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page
Label: independent
Collapse Astral is:
– Adrien (guitars, vocals)
– Michael (synths)
– Anaīs (vocals, piano)
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