La Torture des ténèbres - IV: Memoirs of a Machine Girl (2017)^{Release ID: 26101}

The second phase of my Black Noise deep dive saw me tackling the fourth full-length album from Canadian solo act La Torture des ténèbres (French for “The Torture of Darkness” i.e. as opposed to the wholesome, family-oriented & generally fun garden variety of torture presumably). “IV: Memoirs of a Machine Girl” is an 81 minute marathon for the senses that’ll see your mental stability being well & truly tested so I’d steer well clear of it if you harbor any concerns around your mental health. La Torture des ténèbres is the brain-child of Jessica Kinney; an artist whose creative vision originally began within the more familiar realms of atmospheric black metal but over time has seen her expanding the scope of her metal roots with “IV: Memoirs of a Machine Girl” showcasing a much more expansive array of sounds & possibly even having transcended the confines of metal altogether.

“IV: Memoirs of a Machine Girl” is an absolute beast of a release featuring six very lengthy pieces that all comfortably exceed the ten minute mark. Jess obviously doesn’t care all that much for the vinyl or CD formats of my generation because it almost seems like she’s intentionally extended the album’s run time so that it’s just too long to fit on a single CD. Whatever the reason for it may be though, the run time definitely overstays its welcome a touch & I challenge anyone to actively listen to the entire duration of the album without experiencing some sort of mental fatigue. Personally, I feel that it would have benefitted significantly from the omission of the final track which would have seen it finishing at a still quite indulgent 68 minutes. That’s not to say that closer “Lysol, Scrub Away Your Sanity” is weak in any way but I’m not sure I needed yet another sensory barrage after the first five tracks had seemingly achieved everything that Jess had set out to do.

There are a few different elements to the La Torture des ténèbres sound that are repeated across the tracklisting. The first is the beautiful, dreamy & very Mazzy Star-ish downtempo sections which have layers of effects applied to them in order to give them an eery & sombre feel. I get the feeling that Jess could actually be a very talented performer in that space if she focused her powers on good rather than evil. Then you have the over-the-top noise sections which are much more prevalent & generally see a guitar part providing some sort of melody under a huge & overbearing wall of artificial noise. The first couple of tracks see the instrumentation hinting at a black metal atmosphere but the noise dominates proceedings to such a degree that I’d be reluctant to label this as anything metal related. Outside of those first two tracks I struggle to see the links to black metal though with the general feel of the base music leaning much more closely towards the dreamy post-rock of Sigur Ros. In fact, I’m not even sure the guitars have had any pre-mix distortion applied to them in all honesty so (unlike Wold’s “Screech Owl” that I kicked off my Black Noise deep dive with) most of “IV: Memoirs of a Machine Girl” just doesn’t feel remotely like black metal & I doubt it was ever intended for the black metal audience. The thing that probably sees it being tied back to black metal though are Jessica’s tortured & psychotic screams which sound very much like they could have been taken from a depressive black metal release. They’re relentless in their negativity &, when combined with some pretty twisted samples, ensure that you will find no form of light or empowerment in this music. It’s an ugly wasteland of disgust & disconsolation.

When all of these elements are combined, the result takes the form of a noise release much more than it does a metal one & I tend to think that labelling “IV: Memoirs of a Machine Girl” as a metal release is a bit of a stretch. That’s not to say that it’s not a rewarding experience for the metal audience though. Given my taste profile I’m not surprised that I find the first couple of tracks to be a little more enjoyable than the remainder of the album. The atmosphere of those two tracks hints at a majestic blackened darkness that I find more appealing than the slightly less imposing post-rock driven material but that’s not to say that there are any weak tracks included because there’s not. It’s a very consistent record that could maybe have done with some trimming from a pure indulgence point of view but would also have benefitted from the six tracks having proper endings instead of simply cutting them off dead when they were still in full flight. Overall though, I’d suggest that “IV: Memoirs of a Machine Girl” is a very respectable noise release that seems to sit pretty comfortably under the Non-Metal tag in our database.

For fans of Gnaw Their Tongues, Utarm & Nahvalr.