Quand les couleurs s'estompent

In the Mist is a very new band coming from the French scene, which isn’t active not even for a year. It was formed this year (2014), it consists of one member and in the beginning of November it released its first full length album called “Quand les coulers s’ estompent”. The album contains nine compositions of overall duration of about a little over thirty minutes. When the listener gets his hands on the album, immediately he will understand that here he is dealing with a simple production which exhales the passionate, amateur aesthetics of Black Metal as it was during the early ’90ies. Getting into the part of the music, there is no doubt any more for this particular release. Harsh, melodic Black Metal which, regarding its style, reminds the French releases of the ’90ies that they characterized this melancholic and at the same time frozen and harsh sound.

The riffs are harsh and dirty creating that characteristic frozen and at the same time melancholic atmosphere. The speed of the riffs mainly is of medium pace with a few slower parts while the fast ones almost don’t exist. Surely the first band that comes to the mind of the listener is Mutiilation. Indeed, In the Mist have been influenced a lot by Mutiilation as they remind them both regarding their sound but also in the way that they compose. However, this resemblance did not bother me as the riffs are interesting and the atmosphere that they create is quite intense. On the other hand, almost every track begins with an introduction, either taken from a movie, either it is a part of another track, either it is a part from some other sound document as the news. So this one doesn’t manage to put you into the atmosphere of the tracks every time but most of the times it brings the opposite results. The tracks are quite short in duration (from two to five minutes) and they are structured very well, so that even the shorter ones give the impression of completion to the listener while they achieve to maintain his interest at the same level during the whole duration of the album.

As i mentioned above, the sound is harsh and rough, but it doesn’t bother the listener and it absolutely fits to the style of the compositions. Also the mixture is very good as it has achieved a very nice balance among the instruments. All the instruments are played with passion, while if the listener pays much attention will find mistakes mainly regarding the rhythm. However, the mistakes didn’t annoy me at all and they delivered me to the era when Black Metal was characterized by the passion, the atmosphere and the straightforward feelings that it was provoking to the listener and not by the technic, the quality of the sound or other similar modern bullshit. The guitars are dirty and they put out a very harsh and electrified sound while they deliver flawlessly the feelings and the atmosphere. The bass is not clearly audible but it fills the sound well. The drums although it seems that they are not the regular instrument of the musician, they are played in quite well level with very few rhythmic mistakes. Their lines are simple and they mainly keep the pace. The vocals are the typical harsh, rough Black Metal vocals which would be found in every such release, they remind a lot of Mutiilation. Finally, the lyrics are written in French and they are not contained in the cd.

As you have all understood, here we deal with an old school release, taken out straight from the French scene. The resemblance with Mutiilation is big but i don’t think that In the Mist are interested in offering anything else. They want to create an album – homage to their favourite kind of sound and to the roots of the scene that they belong, something that didn’t bothered me at all. Actually quite the opposite. I believe that the fans of the old French sound will appreciate this release. It worth the listen.