Ars Moriendi - Lorsque Les Coeurs S’assèchent

Angry Metal Guy 70

I’ve been listening to and reviewing Ars Moriendi since 2016. And the only way I can describe this French one-man black/progressive metal band is that it’s a JOURNEY. Though a typical Ars Moriendi album consists of five to six songs, musician Arsonist packs each album with fifty-plus minutes of chaos. And nothing this man does is the same. While there’s definitely a style and theme to the band’s records, each release explores another facet of that sound. This time, Ars Moriendi has ditched many of the horn and wind atmospheres for traditional atmoblack ones. Instead of bombastic symphonies coating his vicious black metal slayings and soothing acoustic guitars, this focused approach allows Arsonist to explore and tinker with guitar-led atmospheres, female choirs, and bizarre yet unique effects. The result isn’t so much a change in direction as a new experiment. Though I know Ars Moriendi well, nothing prepared me for Lorsque Les Coeurs S’assèchent.

That said, I did expect a lengthy opener that throws every strange and fascinating influence at you, whether you like it or not. The title track is an eleven-minute venture into mind-fucking insanity. Opening with acoustic guitars and soothing clean vocals, I’m immediately transported to Viking-era Bathory. But that feeling is short-lived when the building bass and growling vox erupt into a black metal attack that reminds me of mid-career Samael.¹ Yet, the song never holds still, adding Enslaved-like progressiveness, devastating passages, and a chaotic conclusion that piles every one of the song’s elements onto a mound equivalent to the height of the Skull Pit.

Lorsque les coeurs s’assèchent by ARS MORIENDI

But, for all the opener’s ADHD attitude, “Voyage Céleste” takes the cake. This jarring number fucks with every possible emotion, leaving you little chance to absorb a passage before it’s replaced with another. Take the opening minutes of the song. It lulls you into a sad state with sinister whispers and acoustic pluckings. The drums add flavor as the tension begins to break. And when it does, we might as well have changed songs. The transition is so vicious that it pushes your balls up into your throat. Then, it changes again; using high-pitched guitar leads to blanket the vocals and bass. But the most unexpected moment comes when everything collapses into churchy organs and cathedral choirs. And it’s here where you remain trapped for the rest of the song.

“Le vers dans le fruit” is perhaps the most straightforward of the bunch. But that doesn’t mean it translates into predictable and boring. Not at all. “Le vers dans le fruit” is a violent black metal assault with mighty riffs and slick guitar work. It’s a landscape of hills and valleys when the instruments follow the soaring, clean vocals to the top, and the acoustic guitars bring it down to soothing streams and dewy valleys. Then, it turns on you, erasing the beauty around you as the snarls, growls, and grimaces follow the marching chug of an army from hell. Everything burns, and nothing remains.

If “Le vers dans le fruit” is the most straightforward, closer “Le blasphémateur” is anything but. Mixing pianos with Vreid-esque black metal gallops, Arsonist again does everything he can to keep you from unraveling the song’s truth. From popping bass leads, cleverly-timed snare raps, building chugs, dissonant atmospheres, and aggressive sound bytes, there are no answers to this chaos. Every time you feel a climax coming, it returns to the haunting pianos, only to start again. Even when the chugging riffs push the song to its final minutes, it leaves you trying to understand what happened.

While I favor 2019’s La solitude du pieux scélérat to this new platter, there’s a lot of good, weird shit here. The strangest being the closer and “Nous sommes passés.” The latter so much so that I can’t tell if I love it or hate it. Relying on the heavy usage of industrial effects and slithering bass, it stays the course for its five-plus-minute length, never swaying from its unsettling direction. Regardless, Lorsque Les Coeurs S’assèchent is yet another door into the bizarre mind of Arsonist. I’ll never get tired of Ars Moriendi’s output because each record stands alone, venturing into a different aspect with each release. This time around, it’s all about simplicity. Nothing is overly bombastic, the guitar tone is richer, and the record is calmer and less aggressive than previous outings, which makes it a fitting addition to the Book of Ars Moriendi.

Rating: 3.5/5.0
DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Archaic Sound | Bandcamp
Website: facebook.com/arsmorie
Releases Worldwide: August 4th, 2023

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