[Reviewed by: Iaha Crax]
Dehn Sora is gifted by nature for the observation of the monstrosities inhabiting man’s perpetual need for promiscuity and repentance, an urge for annihilation concealed under different grades of perversity or devotional piety. With this newly conceived project he takes a distance from Treha Sektori, his aboriginal dream-state realm, and rubs elbows with the new fashioned extreme metal, letting loose a disgusting titanic slobber flowing upon this ever motionless dissatisfaction of the modern world, as he begins with “Sortez Vos Lames. Que Nous Perdions Avec Nos Poings”.
Throane benefits from a flawless precision of composition and technique, the songs are pure jewels in terms of refinement and execution and Dehn Sora is not only a genuine creator but also an exceptional handyman. In other terms, he has an exquisite flair for transforming his metaphysical anxiety into a precision and efficiency possible only as a result of technical progress. A witness to this paradox of the modern, dehumanized man trying to express his ever present torment by means of those instruments that have actually petrified and digitalized his cries for the spiritual, the artist is feeding upon his own condition. A condition of irremediable chasm, on “Aussi Féroces Que Nous Repentons”, where even the music is being played like a post-metal dirge of one that has already been buried and brings with him something of the reek he absorbed in the grave.
“Derrière-Nous, La Lumière” (the album as well as the title piece) responds to a lack of stimulus. It is driven by a sort of absence, and conceived from fragments of sufferings and failures, that seem awkwardly tied together by disharmonious guitar chords sustained with dissonant drumming. No surprises style-wise, this writing is very dear to the French scene and has scourged even the hearts of the innocent islanders. What gives it a sparkle, like acid champagne toasted at the last party, are the crushing and imploding dark ambient atmospheres, tissues of swamp flora painted against a lightless sky.
When the annihilation of being is shown through an artistic expression this one moment produces the highest intensity: “Un Instant Dans Une Torche”, that instant in the flames of a torch, is that penchant for death, where the surge of pride bursts into the necessary phase of extreme piety, a track of a fulminant mincing fury. Sora is taking extreme metal to a compulsive edge, an interzone where sludge, post-metal and depressive black metal are merged into one sculptural monstrous effigy. It is to be noted that he is the guitarist in the sludge/post-metal band Ovtrenoir, signed at ConSouling Sounds.
If you have witnessed a live performance by his main project, Treha Sektori, you are aware of his amazing power to completely arrest the audience’s perception, a gestural music representation that takes possession of the listener. This is the case with “Contre Terre”, an exalted dark industrial movement, and with his other metal-oriented tracks as well.
Throane along with Treha Sektori constitutes part of a diptych; the emotional ritual ambient sound is empowered by blasting rhythms of guitars and drums, it’s like the inner demons appeased and controlled by the ritual yantras of Treha Sektori have now been released into reality, so that the world openly faces the suffering. “Nous Blâmons La Tempête De Nous Avoir Laissés En Plaies” forces into the listener this scorn, this exhausting uneasiness, a refusal to swallow the pain again and again and blame the skies for it. And out of all this cosmic drama, so beautifully expressed here, a sense of election still hovers, as if “suffering represents the superiority of man to God” (Simone Weil).
What is the artist’s response to this falling from grace, “A Cette Chute”, the final song on the album? Repetition, like his tactile arpeggios, and the oppressive dispersal of emotions by a fluidity which announces the putrefaction of the body.
Behind us, the light…What lies in other directions, this album depicts in a personal, accurate and very emotional manner, a musical ambiance that will hook the modern spirit as it is a depiction of its own milieu, existence: La vie c’est ça, un bout de lumière qui finit dans la nuit (Life is this, a piece of light that ends into the night; Louis-Ferdinand Céline).
Throane – Derrière Nous, La Lumière
Debemur Morti Productions – DMP0142
CD/Digital 2016
Santa Sangre 