Silhouette – Les Dires de l'Âme, CD

DIGICD，法国后黑金属，2024年新专辑。

Born in 2019 in Montpellier, the French sextet of Silhouette were able to make a name for themselves with the debut EP Les Retranchements, released in 2022 by Antiq, and build up a strong live experience at several events in France. With their incisive, post-metal-tinged black metal and the strength of their two singers, Ondine and Yharnam, the band invites introspection and tackles the theme of dreams, nightmares, and lost ones.

Now, two years after that celebrated EP, Silhouette will release their debut album, Les Dires de l'Ame. Taking listeners on a long, dreamlike journey, the band's first full-length spans extremes of sound - beauty to darkness, violence to repose - and shows Silhouette masterfully combining a black metal base with the skyscraping melodicism of shoegaze and the deft textural shifts of post-rock. Although comprising ten songs across 46 minutes, the album feels far more epic than that conventional construction may suggest; Silhouette's songwriting simply stuns with its acute balance of drama and flow, hypnotizing and dazzling at every turn. The same can be said for the layered dual vocals of Ondine and Yharnam, working a stronger spell that's at times almost crushingly beautiful. But to call Les Dires de l'Ame a "black metal" record or especially a "post-metal" one misses the point: while the destination is no less important, that journey the band take you on is, in essence, the "destination." Either way, Silhouette now come strongly recommended to fans of Alcest, Sylvaine, Cult of Luna, Amenra, and Darkher.