AN NCS PREMIERE: THROANE — “PLUS UNE MAIN A MORDRE”

 

Almost one month ago we assisted in presenting the first excerpt from Plus Une Main A Mordre (“No Hand Left To Bite”), the second album by Throane, which is the musical alter ego of French photographer, illustrator, designer Dehn Sora, whose visual creations have accompanied albums by the likes of Blut Aus Nord, Ulver, Deathspell Omega, and many others. The album will be released by Debemur Morti Productions on October 20, and today it’s our pleasure to reveal the title track, which ends the album in stunning fashion.

Dehn Sora composed the music on the album and created all of the sounds, with the exception of the staggeringly powerful drumming of Gregoire Quartier of Cortez and the spectrum of voices you will hear on the song we’re premiering today, for which credit is due to Throane’s guests Colin Van Eeckhout (Amenra), Sylvain (Incivil Tragedis), and French graphic designer Valnoir.

 

 

The sheer overpowering immensity of “Plus Une Main A Mordre” is difficult to capture in words, as is the alchemical mutation of varying genre elements that have been fused into the song. The bass pulse is titanic; the drums boom like megaton detonations; the dense waves of guitar abrasion operate like the slow-moving roar of a cyclone, enveloping everything. These forces build gradually from the shimmering ambient sounds that greet you at the outset, and when all has been fully displayed, what began as something bleak and sorrowing in its resonance becomes vast, panoramic, ominous, and frighteningly majestic… an exaltation of the sovereignty of death (or so it seems to this listener).

Oh, but your head and your body will want to move too, even as your mind might be crouching and quaking under the mountainous impact of this pitch-black stormfront. Drummer Gregoire Quartier locks into syncopated rhythms that, in conjunction with the titanic bass tones, have a physically compelling effect, although he also scatters all sorts of interesting patterns and explosive eruptions across the course of the song.

The drums briefly disappear before you reach this long song’s mid-point, leaving the field to the drift of cosmic ambient sound — which becomes shrill, discordant, and disorienting, signaling the onset of the song’s main movement. And it’s when that enormous surge of sound resumes that you begin to hear voices in a much more noticeable way. They have a lot to do with the feeling of terror conjoined with grandeur that grows increasingly intense as the remaining minutes pass. Cauterizing shrieks, choral voices, the sound of something like a wailing spectral chant — all of these voices combine to create a mix of sensations, something like the solemnity of a dark ecclesiastical ceremony that also includes the awful pain of an immolation.

 

A press release tells us that the album “seeks balance between the struggle and the letting go, passing from chaos to quiet in revelatory circular motions…. This is a record of cities as tombs, of failing industry, corroding capitalism, fractured lives, divided peoples, isolationism and lack.”

The album was produced, mixed, and mastered by Samuel Vaney at Lead & Sulfur Studioin Switzerland. Dehn Sora created the album’s visual content, as well as the music.

Pre-order links and the track list can be found below, along with our premiere of the title track.

PRE-ORDER:
Digipack CD : https://lc.cx/G5Ja
Vinyl : https://lc.cx/G533
Digital : https://throane.bandcamp.com/album/plus-une-main-a-mordre

THROANE ON FACEBOOK:
http://www.facebook.com/throane/

TRACK LIST:
1. Aux Tirs Et Aux Traits
2. Et Ceux En Lesquels Ils Croyaient
3. A Trop Réclamer Les Vers
4. Et Tout Finira Par Chuter
5. Mille Autres
6. Plus Une Main À Mordre