Premiere: Neige et Noirceur - "Le Portail de Kadath"

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Some bands have the ability to seemingly effortlessly turn a song into a cinematic experience. The latest from The Ruins of Beverast—Blood Vaults – The Blazing Gospel of Heinrich Kramer—showcased this talent well. Songs didn’t go from riff to riff or A to Fin; they were immersive soundscapes that gracefully twisted and turned like the plot of a well-crafted story, vivid enough to warrant an imagined visual backdrop. Neige et Noirceur likewise creates consuming, ambient black metal with some oomph that’ll also get the mind’s eye running wild.

Neige et Noirceur is from Quebec, making the one-man band another black metal great from the French-speaking province that has an unfair concentration of excellent black metal. Main man Spiritus has been at it for a while, and the forthcoming Gouffre Onirique et Abîmes Cosmiques will mark the fourth Neige et Noirceur LP and, counting splits, EPs and comps, the band’s 18th release overall since a debut 2005 demo. One constant for Neige et Noirceur is a decidedly cold sound (the band’s name translates to “Snow and Blackness”), and on Gouffre Onirique et Abîmes Cosmiques, that cold is of the deep space variety, with subtle synths evoking something astral. Around the 4:30 mark of “Le Portail de Kadath,” the cold seeps through the thick, robust riffing—listen to the echoing snare in the frigid, empty void.

Gouffre Onirique et Abîmes Cosmiques is out on March 28 on Sepulchral Productions and is available to preorder.

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