Year of No Light – Les Maîtres Fous (Review)

This is the latest release from French post-metal band Year of No Light.

Les Maîtres Fous is a single 29-minute track that finds Year of No Light at their most droning incarnation. For context for this record, I’m just going to reproduce some of the promo blurb – “Commissioned by Musée Du Quai Branly in Paris for their 2012 ‘L’Invention Du Sauvage’ exhibition, the trance-metal pioneers approached the ritual practices of the Hauka movement as depicted in the film and responded with their uniquely hypnotic heaviness.

Performed only twice, once at the exhibition on the 6th January, 2012 and again in Bordeaux on the 29th January, 2015; this release is a live recording of the second and final performance of ‘Les Maîtres Fous’. “

With this in mind, Les Maîtres Fous isn’t brand new material as such, but that doesn’t stop it from being a compelling listen.

It begins with gentle drone, yet you can feel the tension building beneath the surface. Like an increasingly turbulent ocean, the music ebbs and flows with ever-greater tides, gathering power as it swells towards overwhelm. It’s atmospheric, immersive, and hypnotic.

The music becomes more layered and intense over time, building dread, building tension, building apprehension. Around the 10-minute mark the first drums can be heard, almost hesitant in their tentative beginnings. The mood becomes gradually darker and darker, adding an understated ferocity as the percussion becomes denser and more involved – the band do have two drummers, after all.

18 minutes in, we reach the calm of the storm. The drums fall away, and a certain fraught serenity takes over. It lasts a scant few minutes, before the percussion rises once more and the music starts to ascend ever higher levels of Hell. The storm is here, and the nightmare arrived. The end of Les Maîtres Fous offers mood-rich darkness and atmospheric immersion.

Once again, Year of No Light showcase why they are so highly regarded by so many. If expressive cinematic droning post-metal doom is your thing, then you should be all over this gem.