Review: Point Mort – Le Point de Non-Retour

Style: Post-hardcore, post-metal (Mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Rolo Tomassi, Converge, Terminal Sleep
Country: France
Release date: 25 April 2025

Our inner emotional worlds are an unwieldy, convoluted place: feelings never come standalone and can’t be neatly filed away, as they end up bleeding into facets of our lives both conscious and unconscious. So why should we expect that managing these emotions is a clean and regimented process? Sometimes, the best course of action when dealing with messy and intense feelings is an equally messy and intense approach. For French band Point Mort, this manifests through testaments to fury and exhaustion on latest record, Le Point de Non-Retour (The Point of No Return). Will we reach cathartic relief by its end, or will indulging in these grievances take us past the point of no return?

Intro “ॐ Ajar” transmutes Le Point de Non-Retour’s opening moments from bubbling inner tension into righteous fury by juxtaposing buzzing electronic percussion against sass-tinged cleans and distorted harsh screams. Vocalist Sam Pillay proclaims, ‘I LOST MY MIND’ on following track “An Ungrateful Wreck of Our Ghost Bodies,” and blast beats annihilate any semblance of restraint; out of Point Mort’s primordial sludge of rage emerges a stream-of-consciousness rarefaction of frustration and anger. Le Point de Non-Retour is a blender of post-hardcore intensity, post-metal contemplations, and straightforward hardcore punk assaults. Chunks of its constituent forms can be found in the suspension, but the product as a whole is one of its own, uniquely integrating elements of sludgy neocrust, black metal blast beats and tremolos, and slippery, undulating electronics that urge the listener to sway in tandem. On very rare occasions, tracks will reprise an idea or utilize a chorus, but song structures generally follow the inner train of thought that manifests when processing complex and extreme emotions.

Each track brings an ineffable sense of excitement and intrigue while retaining vulnerability in rage-room songwriting. “An Ungrateful Wreck of Our Ghost Bodies” is an act in three parts, beginning in excessive neocrust chaos with head-smashing percussion and rumbling rhythms. After a smooth and ethereal quieter section, the intensity returns in full—but in a more refined and straightforward form, creating a sense of drama and progression through a willingness to sharpen focus in the track’s final hours. The bite-sized “Skinned Teeth” brings a sense of vigor through the use of double-kick drums and fast-paced stuttering drum patterns, adhering to an unstoppable kinetic force across its short runtime. In contrast, the cinematics of “The Bent Neck Lady” emerge through a comparatively slower burn, beginning with heavily reverbed vocals and a slowly building drum pattern under smooth, swirling percussion. By the halfway mark, the listener is pulled in by a riptide of sludgy grooves from guitarists Aurélien Sauzereau and Olivier Millot, and near its end, a volcanic intensity is broached in repeated throat-tearing screams.

Le Point de Non-Retour’s sense of pathos is centralized in the vocal performance. Pillay showcases several styles, injecting melodrama through clean vocals, acerbic and acidic harshes, and occasionally veering into sass territory with a pouty and irreverent half-sung, half-spoken affect. Pillay’s harshes in particular are stunningly powerful, her eviscerating shrieks projected into an endless chasm of grief and consternation. Most striking is the performance that concludes “The Bent Neck Lady”; overtop wailing tremolos and blast beats, Pillay lets out the most pained and haunting howls of the record over and over, the anguish and frustration too much for words. The sass vocals work well in their subtle incorporation on the verses of the title track, adding a playful spin that almost evokes SOPHIE’s “Faceshopping”. A majority of the time, though, the squealy and sneering delivery ranges from listenable to tolerable, adding little more than texture to the music. I’d frankly prefer if they were either incorporated more regularly into the compositions or taken out to create a more cohesive mood instead of only being used intermittently.

Through chaos comes clarity—sometimes, the easiest way to organize ourselves is to malleate and rearrange the internals, letting things explode and seeing where they land before bringing the pieces back together. Point Mort’s Le Point de Non-Retour goes through a similar process of deconstruction, destruction, and creation, breaking down the fundamentals of hardcore punk, post-rock, and post-black metal, and congealing them into an unstoppable wall of visceral intensity. While the end product may not be rid of its inherent rage, the record most certainly alchemizes it effectively, embodying a much-needed catharsis by its conclusion.

Recommended tracks: An Ungrateful Wreck of Our Ghost Bodies, The Bent Neck Lady, Le Point de Non-Retour
You may also like: Gospel, Habak, Volatile Ways, American Nightmare, Tocka, Hoplites
Final verdict: 8/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Official Website | Facebook | Instagram

Label: Almost Famous – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Point Mort is:
– Olivier Millot (guitars)
– Sam Pillay (vocals)
– Damien Hubert (bass)
– Simon Belot (drums)
– Aurélien Sauzereau (guitars)