Etoile Filante - Mare tranquillitatis (2024)^{Release ID: 50923}

Well, this is a bit of a strange one, I must say. Mare tranquillitatis is an album of synth-heavy cosmic black metal, so your first question I would imagine is "So what is so unusual about that?" The strangeness comes from both the sound of the synths, which is of a vintage, 1970's type, typically employed by the likes of Hawkwind on their late Seventies and early Eighties albums and the prominence of said synths in the mix. In fact, for significant portions of the album, the black metal component seems to be acting in support of the synths rather than vice-versa. Yet, somehow the band make this work far better than I would have expected, even though I found it to be a little distracting at times.

The black metal component is reasonable enough, if not exactly earth-shattering, with a decent quota of fiery blasting and the vocals possessing the requisite distant-sounding banshee shrieks which we all expect as a minimum from our atmospheric black metal. But then, where your usual atmo-black album fills out the atmosphere with an additional layer using often quite reedy and thin-sounding synths, Etoile Filante go a whole other way and dollop on the retro-sounding synths in a way that often pushes them as the focus of the tracks. What I personally found especially distracting by this though, is how the synths often brought to mind other songs and set my attention wandering away from the matter at hand. For example, there is a point midway through the opener where the synths sound just like parts of the Queen soundtrack for the Flash Gordon movie and, similarly during the next track, Fragments de Poseidonis - d'après Atlantide de Clark Ashton Smith, they felt identical to the mid-section of Hawkwind's Damnation Alley from their 1977 Quark, Strangeness and Charm album, all of which pulled me out of the current listening experience. Of course, I accept that this is a personal problem and most likely won't be experienced by other listeners and the issue doesn't really arise outside of the first two tracks. Either way, the resultant album has an atmosphere I have not encountered too often in a black metal context. I find most cosmic black metal seeks to convey the frigid coldness of interstellar space and the awe-inspiring effect of sources of unbelievable energy such as stars and black holes within this frozen environment, whereas Etoile Filante seem to be taking a warmer, more human-centric view as expressed by the synth-work, which more evokes man-made environments such as starships or orbitals. The final couple of tracks, "Naufragés de l'océan d'onyx" and "Le vent des éternels" strike a much better balance between synths and black metal and, for me, are the best two tracks on the album and this is the main reason I leave the album in a positive frame of mind, I suspect.

I'm not saying it is by any means, but my main worry with Mare tranquillitatis is that, in the crowded black metal world, the untypical synthwork is a "gimmick" to enable it to stand out from the slew of black metal releases destined to hit our shelves and streaming platforms in 2024. It's certainly got me talking about it for one anyway. I hope this isn't the case and the guys are all-in with this from a purely artisitic viewpoint because even though it sometimes doesn't work entirely, it is still an interesting listen throughout.