It starts with the artwork. Inevitably, when trying to figure out which band to review form the huge amount of material that is kindly sent our way, there has to be some sort of system in place for filtering what is an otherwise unmanageable pile. For me, it always starts with the art, as it’s a huge part of the experience of listening to an album. Pilori, who reached out to us, have stunning artwork (all the better that the release is available on vinyl), whilst the brief description of the band, mercifully free of hyperbole, also captured the attention. I’m glad that it did because, put simply, A Nos Morts is a phenomenal achievement. A crushing, surprisingly dextrous example of grind with elements of death, doom and black metal all shot through its misanthropic core, it’s an album that grabs you from the first opening notes and keeps you hooked, even whilst screaming into your face, for the duration.
A veritable epic at nearly three-and-a-half minutes, Que La Bete Meure (feat. Dylan Walker) is an assault so dense and dizzying that it cleaves closer to the more extreme end of black metal than your typical grind. It makes for one hell of a start to the album. No less intense is Apnee, which is so layered in distortion it takes on an industrial feel, which is entirely in keeping with the mechanistic pummelling in which the band engage. As violent as its subject matter, La Grande Terreur is over in just over a minute, before Matthias Jungbluth pops up to lend the band a hand on the seething Poursuite Du Vent, a spasmodic assault that seems to exist in an alternate universe so deflty executed are the tempo shifts. As if to counter any suggestion of overt technicality, Roi Des Rats is forty second of harrowing misanthropy masquerading as music, with the result that the doom-laden, slow-moving horror of A Nos Morts actually comes as some relief.
Kicking off (literally) the album’s second half, the explosive Lorsque Viendra La Nuit gets back to the bloody business of savaging the listener via relentless percussive blasts and feral vocals. Divine Comedie may last a minute-and-a-half, but its delivered with such precision-guided disdain, that it appears to fly past in a fraction of that. In contrast, Sous Mes Mains dips its toe into the murky waters of sludge metal, the corrosive riffs scouring the surface of the increasingly frantic percussion. The album ends with two longer pieces. The first of these, A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu is a blackened nightmare captured in agonising slow-mo, voices screaming at the listener from the dark as the band descend into a hell of their own making. Album closer Danse Macabre serves to offer some redemption, drawing the listener out of the depths towards a shimmering, post-rock guitar line that slowly draws the blinds and allows the daylight to return. It’s a mesmerising closer to a consistently surprising record.
Unfeasibly brutal, and yet exceptionally proficient musically, Pilori have as much in common with Dillinger Escape Plan and their bait-and-switch musical approach, as they do with Napalm Death. The result is an album that tempers brutality with intelligence and a rare musicality, and it’s never less than impressive, even whilst stomping your brains out all over the floor. A harrowing exploration of extremity, A Nos Morts may be music for a select few, but it is a shining example of the genre and a damned impressive outing. 9/10
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