I guess it’s a sign of being in the business for too long, when you look at a band’s name and presentation and immediately have some ideas of what’s ahead. With Incandescence’s Le Coeur De L’Homme (Profound Lore) I had an inkling towards it being the work of a multi-instrumentalist working within the confines of blackened death metal. Well, I almost nailed it. Le Coeur De L’Homme leans more into black metal and features Louis-Paul Gauvreau handling vocals while Philippe Boucher is the mastermind behind everything else.
I may have not been totally correct in my initial assessment, but I did expect and see promotional photos of long-haired gentlemen posing around in the woods. Can’t have black metal without dudes standing in a forest. And that’s no knock on folks who host photo shoots just off their local highway. That just means the album is going to be wall to wall tremolo picking and blast-beats as far as the eye can see. And that’s exactly what you get on Le Coeur De L’Homme. Hey, I don’t make the rules.
Save for some opening acoustic picking, ‘Avilissement’ immediately leans into the pounding tempo and rarely relents. No keyboards or orchestration for mood here, Boucher’s incessant snare and jarring riffs provide the frigid ambience. Occasionally a song like ‘Avide de cris’ provides a brief blast-beat ceasefire, but the cymbals and tense guitars warn you that the peace won’t last long, and we’re once again tossed into the maelstrom. And that’s when it becomes obvious that Boucher’s immense talents on the throne outshine the rest of his work on guitar and bass. I mean, when he’s not setting fire to the forest here, he’s bashing the skins for space-age technical death outfit Beyond Creation. Have a gander at ‘La spirale de l’échec’ and bask in that opening drum fill. After that, the guitars and bass are almost garnish compared to what’s emanating from the drum kit.
Sure, there are more fully-formed black metal outfits out there – though not too many – but you will be hard pressed to find one that can come close to replicating what Incandescence has got going for them in terms of percussion.
Buy the album here: https://incandescenceband.bandcamp.com/album/le-coeur-de-lhomme
7 / 10
HANS LOPEZ