AN NCS PREMIERE: MAÏEUTISTE — “LIFELESS VISIONS”

 

After more than five years of work, the French band Maïeutiste have completed recording of an ambitious self-titled debut album that will be released on September 18 by Les Acteurs de L’Ombre Productions. Two of the album’s 11 tracks have previously been shared with listeners, and today we bring you a third — “Lifeless Visions” — presented in the form of a video that combines the music with imagery from F.W. Murnau’s landmark 1926 film Faust.

At nearly 10 minutes in length, the song is more like a tour of some imagined haunting landscape than a walk around the block outside your home — and the song would leave an unsettling impression even without the visual accompaniment from Faust (though the video is indeed a very fitting combination of sight and sound).

 

 

The soundscape Maïeutiste have created crosses genre boundaries, reaching from the barren, pitiless reaches of wretched doom to the poisonous thorned thickets of black metal. Deep, horrifying growls mesh with clean chanted harmonies, sprays of acidic vitriol, and cries of mortifying passion. Anguished, weeping melodies segue into soulful guitar harmonies, feed-back laced droning, and ultimately a conflagration of raging riffs and blasting drums. What begins with the dragging rhythms of a funeral procession evolves into an adrenaline-fueled torrent.

Finding the right genre label may challenge some listeners, but the rest of us can put that challenge aside and simply become immersed in this atmospheric and highly variable sonic excursion (which is well worth the time).

 

Maïeutiste was recorded and mixed by Ari Lausseur, with mastering by Hex Memitim Studio. The album will be released in a limited (100 copies) Digibox edition that includes a digipak CD , a woven patch, pins, and a download link with a bonus track. The cover art was rendered in charcoal by Laurence Léonard-Sytnik.

As noted earlier, videos for two other tracks — “Absolution” and “The Fall” — have previously premiered from this new album, and for your convenience we’ve included them below our premiere of “Lifeless Visions”.

http://www.lesacteursdelombre.net/productions/v2/
https://www.facebook.com/maieutisteofficial