Volcanoes can lie dormant for millennia, and that's almost how long this project took to come together. 8 is for Infinite, She Left the Defil for Fire: for over a decade, Virginia B. Fernson (Skinsitive) has been groping, scribbling the outlines of a project in the making. Instrumental post-rock, drum machine, trauma, catharsis, questions of gender identity, feminism, the need to create a safe space... The ingredients were falling into place, and it was finally in the form of a collective that Lorsque les Volcans Dorment found itself. A stable line-up was joined by a range of different voices, each adding their own words, so essential to the group's aim of bringing the voices of gender minorities to the fore, in a quest to close the scars left by life. Six tracks make up this eponymous debut album, as many stories.
But what happens when volcanoes go dormant? Well, the magma cools, buried deep beneath the Earth. And then one day, perhaps, those things we bury resurface and erupt. Cold programming, introspective atmospheres: Au-delà d'une Fenêtre plays with this idea. Very quickly, the mechanical side that gives Lorsque les Volcans Dorment its industrial touch is warmed up by the other instruments, by the voice reciting its text, by the poetry and subterranean, contained emotions that finally burst forth and sweep everything away in their path. The press kit mentions Archive, God is an Astronaut and Nine Inch Nails as influences, and we find them: elegance and raging élans, biting guitars and melancholy piano... Lorsque les Volcans Dorment alternates between chaotic whirlwinds and contemplative lulls, telluric tremors and elevation, still-open scars and calmer parts that heal and soothe.
Slam, poetry, saturated vocals: the forms vary. The violin of Maud Harribey (Bank Myna) or the trumpet of Camilla Sferrazza bring their warmth, and the atmospheres are mysterious. Peace and conflict, heat and cold, visceral rage and introspection, the harshness of reality and dreamlike escape: contrasts are everywhere. Whether we lose ourselves in the hypnotic pulsations of Monstruations or the desperate lamentations of Narciso, for example, each track passes through several states, intense shocks and flames that we brave to find a form of peace. Despite the sometimes vindictive charges, despite the wounds, despite everything that Les Volcans denounce, the emphasis is on healing... and this often involves big, bronchial-clearing guitars, because we all know it's better when we let these things explode.
And, just as the intensity reaches its peak with La Chute du Pélican and the gut-wrenching screams of Aline (from post-metal band Përl), the guitar starts playing the same notes again as at the very beginning of the album, drawing the listener back in and giving the whole thing a cyclical dimension. By opting for a collective with multiple voices, open to different experiences, Lorsque les Volcans Dorment create a safe space for expression, a place for demands too, but above all a place where everyone can shed their burdens, their illusory boundaries, meet, exchange and, collectively, move forward. Let's let the past catch fire and reignite once and for all, so that we can look to the future with peace of mind. Volcanic soils are particularly fertile: in time, these devastating magma flows will bring life.
