Band:	Danishmendt
Album:	Un Passé Aride
Style:	Metalcore
Website:	http://www.danishmendt.com/
Release date:	2010

01. La Source
02. Lumpen Heros
03. Chutes
04. Revelations
05. Das Boot
06. Une Houle D'Un Siecle
07. Refuge
08. Credo (Zero Absolu)

So this is a difficult review to do. For starters, the band itself is difficult to peg down. Confused as to what hole to ram this square peg into, a visit to their LastFM page saw them affixed with the following tags: doomcore, noise, French, sludge, Neurosis, post-core, ambient, and stoner. Ok, so that field trip didn't help.

Or did it?

Truth be told it is difficult to pin-down because Danishmendt incorporate various elements of each of these (and other) subgenres. So while I cannot really classify Un Passé Aride for you metal-nerds hell bent on assigning a subsubsubgenre to everything, I can tell you what to expect of the album.

It is eight tracks and 60 minutes or so worth of bleak, stark, oppressive music. At times they reminded me of Streetcleaner-era Godflesh or Red Harvest, and at others far more dark noise territory. The Neurosis tag makes a degree of sense - not because they sound like that band so much as they manage to also capture that band's ability to create and maintain a high level of tension that begs for some release in a pyroclastic metal explosion? but a release which never comes. The tension doesn't get relieved in any blaze of crushing riff glory? too bad, so sad, worm. Your misery continues unabated.

So I have been struggling with this review. It should be obvious in that it doesn't seem to flow like some of my prior work. I've listened to this album twice a day for the last 10 days or so? and still the words never fell into place like they usually do for me.

If you have read this far, you must be at least intrigued. Consider my struggles a good thing. Frankly, if it wasn't a good album, and I struggled, I'd have bailed and just forced something mediocre a week and 12 listens ago. Instead I have soldiered on because Un Passé Aride demands that I do so.

If the mish-mash of various tags and my absolute inability to coherently describe this album catches your attention, check them out. You will be sorry. But in a good way!