Le Point de non-retour strikes us immediately with its expressionist artwork, that red that clatters like a Munch nightmare, tormented bodies, a soothed face, another in pain... Post-hardcore band Point Mort (to keep things simple with the labels) continues on its way, setting out a visual warning. It's going to be eventful, visceral and totally unpredictable.
In fact, the opening track ॐ Ajar, with its electro/industrial sounds and distant cries haunting distant echoes, is quite unprecedented for Point Mort. We didn't have to wait long to be surprised and see, once again, the band's appetite for mixing, experimenting, breaking with tone, decompartmentalizing... This creative energy explodes in our faces on An Ungrateful Wreck of Our Ghost Bodies: we're reminded of Converge's flayed, uncontainable aggression and Julie Christmas's gut-felt sense of theater, while for over ten minutes Point Mort takes us in all directions with a talent for unifying vocal lines in a register that, surprisingly, sometimes almost reminds us of Guano Apes!
Let's salute the compositions, then, for at no point does Point Mort become routine or boring, but above all, it's never pompous. There's an intensity at all times, a wild, raw thing that can, in the flutter of a butterfly's wing, go from hellish fury to introspection between post-rock, progressive, trip-hop and even a few pop touches. The reliefs are vertiginous and, over time, the tracks take on an epic narrative allure that we follow, hanging on to these tortuous structures like we cling to a good book or the wagon of a rollercoaster. We savor the moment, but we're already waiting impatiently to see where it all leads, excited but also ready to take the most vicious blows.
On vocals, Sam embodies all the voices that burst forth in Le point de non-retour, assuming the role of singer-actress-medium: is she several people, or several facets of a being fragmented into innumerable razor-sharp shards? Terrifying, intimidating, overwhelming, she incites, roars, minces, stirs light and shade, hope and rage. Her involvement is total, her performance inhabited. Clear vocals, abyssal growls, cries from the gut, rapped lyrics: these long tracks offer her the ideal playground to unleash all those bubbling voices. More than a polycephalic hydra, let's simply see it as the expression of human existence in all its nuances, contradictions and surprises, between vivid pain, raging explosions and poetic onirism.
As the cathartic Der, with its galvanizing climate of revolt, comes to an abrupt end, assuming right up to the last second the radical nature of Point Mort's choices and its refusal of the predictable, we're left a little stunned. Indeed, after that, there's no turning back, and so much the better. Le Point de non-retour is a possessed ensemble, a collective work in which no one cheats. If generosity can be seen in the length of the tracks, which regularly exceed six minutes, it's above all in the absolute dedication of the people involved: every riff, every scream, every 666-degree turn oozes authenticity. No restraint, no false modesty: Point Mort gives its all, but does so with a deep respect for the listener that translates into a desire to offer us something rich, unexpected and unique. It's refreshing, flattering and, above all, a big slap in the face that sets the mind right.
