DYSYLUMN
Abstraction

Since their formation in 2010, Dysylumn have been something of an unsung "dark horse" of the French black metal scene. Whilst exhibiting some of that scene's idiomatic traits - the robustness of the orthodox / religious school, the melancholy of its more lonerist school - the duo have recast them in vivid new iterations. Signal Rex made a bloodpact with the band in 2020 to release their visionary second album, 2018's Occultation, on vinyl. Two years later, Dysylumn impossibly eclipsed that modern classic with the staggering double-album Cosmogonie, also in 2020. Between the two recordings, the duo displayed a breadth of vision firmly rooted in black metal's noblest traditions, but one more so aiming for the hinterlands of creativity and experience.

And so it goes with Dysylumn's long-awaited fourth full-length, Abstraction. Curiously titled, Abstraction is actually the duo's most immediate record in many a year; even on the surface, its five-song / 37-minute runtime seems relatively quick by comparison. However, to suggest that Dysylumn are shortchanging their still-swirling creativity by attacking more directly would be grossly missing the point. Gutted bass-throb and etheric guitar characteristically form the foundation, but here does the former sound more pensive and contemplative while the latter suitably slashes & surges with an unmatched amount of emotion. In fact, just isolating the guitar work of Sébastien Besson alone would render Abstraction an incredibly compelling experience, but his impassioned vocals along with the slippery-yet-stylish drumming of Camille Oliver Faure-Brac make the album an effortless exercise in point / counterpoint: a reinvigoration of black metal classicism on one hand and a defiant flipping of the script on the other, bypassing "progressive" and "post" tags not out of churlish disdain but rather as already-established signposts of no use to Dysylumn. Stargazing, wistful, and yet so full of vim and vigor - Abstraction hits emotional centers, HARD, without obfuscating their core creativity. From nascent flames to the final breaths of a flickering light...