With two albums and a split with Limbes, Marion Leclercq has established herself as one of the most singular voices to emerge from the shadows in the last ten years. Her music is at once visceral, monolithic, hypnotic and mystical, borrowing from industrial, doom, black metal, new wave and alot of other genres to plunge us into an intimate ritual, something both fascinating and nail-biting. Amidst the Flames, May Our Organs Resound reveals its intentions right from its artwork and title. First of all, there's the organ-shaped palisade and the pruning hook in the middle, referring both to women's work in the fields and to witchcraft. The symbolism is not lost on us... The title, for its part, seems to play on the double meaning of the word “organ”: the musical instrument she plays... or the viscera. With Mütterlein, it's all about guts and crossing the fire, sublimating suffering.
With this third album, the universal and collective resonance of intimate torments is more explicit: the album is presented as a promise of resilience and, in the words of the artist, ‘an ode to all those who have suffered in silence, especially women, whose bodies have been instrumentalised and sacrificed’. Anarcha, the first track, evokes the memory of Anarcha Westcott, the enslaved woman who underwent several surgical operations without anaesthetic and played a major role in the development of modern gynaecology... Its minimalist techno beat prepares the listener for a trance, with menacing layers already building up, heralding the dark storm to come. The album Bring Down the Flags had given Mütterlein a more funereal tone, and we find it again here, but with a more rhythmic approach, more industrial too, both oppressive and oppressed, as if held back by the spectres that haunt it and the certainty of a gloomy future.
Mütterlein's music has always been intimidating, poignant and haunting. The rage that erupts from the opaque Concrete Black, somewhere between shamanic incantation, industrial nightmare and flayed post-metal, is merciless. The melancholy atmosphere grips you, the scent of mourning never letting go. The wailing, the electronic loops, the organ, the guitar... all contribute to the ritual and give it its timeless touch. Marion Leclercq abolishes time with her music, summoning the ghosts of the past to speak more clearly of the present. If Mütterlein always has the slow heaviness of a fatal destiny that takes its time (destiny knows that there is no point in fighting: you lose in the end), we discover a new intensity as the album unfolds like a single immutable track from which the listener cannot escape, both terrified and fascinated (Division of Pain is an epic storm from which no one will emerge unscathed, a whirlwind of pain mutating into a funeral march with the air of a mutilated mechanical waltz).
It's particularly pleasing to hear her distinctive, inhabited, rough and deep vocals more regularly than in the past. Marion Leclercq has inherited her sound from the new wave of the 80s, the grunge scene of the 90s and more recent post-metal, with her false apathy and the power of the emotions she conveys (the crescendo of Ivory Claws, rising from thick bass, is devastating). It denounces, condemns, cries, exorcises... but it also sometimes brings a form of light, creating some stunning chiaroscuro (during the overwhelming riffs of Wounded Grace, for example). By inviting the dark ambient / ritual project Treha Sektori on the tracks Memorial One and Memorial Two, Mütterlein mixes the organic and the synthetic, the industrial coldness with ancestral mysticism, the spectral organ adding a sacred touch. It's as evocative as it is superb, and makes the spirits that inhabit the album palpable.
More than ever, the tone is one of contemplation and mourning. This third album once again plays with time, giving us space to think about our dead, but is also a quest for healing. Mütterlein is both darkness - the darkness that worries and locks us in, but also the darkness that serves as a refuge - and flame, the flame that burns, but also the flame that enlightens. You can burn witches, their ashes will fertilise your soil... Constantly evolving, Amidst the Flames, May Our Organs Resound is a logical extension of Bring Down the Flags, but also the ideal balance in the artist's music, which is more incarnate than ever. She's renewed herself sufficiently, breathing all her soul into her music, which resonates more powerfully than ever. It's a new masterpiece, radical, dark, cathartic and monumental.
