For a two-disc album, “Animale(s)” features amazingly consistent songwriting quality. The riffs play with unnerving dissonance and chromatics amid pummeling kick drums. There are a handful of tremolo riffs and blastbeats thrown in, but the band does not dwell on them for long. Instrumental track “(X)” focuses on a slower dirge that builds with ferocious intensity into a faster-paced blackened climax. The chugging pseudo-breakdown at three minutes into “Dans ta salive, sur sa peau” turns into a repetitive meditation as secondary guitars play the tritone above. The opening track on the second disc, “D’errances en inimities,” features dissonant, sinister riffs played with the blackened-death sensibility of Arkhon Infaustus. The use of contrasts creates an atmosphere of uncertainty and dread. Celeste is a band in pursuit of a clear vision.

Another remarkable thing about this album is that there is no filler. There are no ballads, no extended ambient tracks. Celeste delivers a full two discs of their particular brand of terror without compromise. The instrumental tracks are just as focused and intense as the standard tracks with vocals. One album’s worth of this stuff would be lethal, but two discs of music at this level with consistent intensity and quality is mind-blowing. The one exception to the intensity might be the subdued outro on the second disc, which doesn’t alleviate the tension so much as merely draw the curtains on the whole disturbing affair.

Fans of black metal that focuses not on speed but on darkness and brutality will ravenously devour both discs of this filthy stuff. All others, take warning: there is no respite from the relentless advance. Celeste has crafted their death-infused blackened hardcore into a devastating, two-album musical assault on body and soul.

Nowadays, with every just formed garage band putting out records left and right, weeding out the good has become a task too tedious. Luckily, life’s randomness and word to mouth are quite good at filtering the unnecessary and presenting bands that might actually matter. And via our forums (feel free to join in), I stumbled upon France’s Celeste.

When it comes down to French metal, Alcest and Les Discrets have been in the limelight this year, but unlike their fellow countrymen, Celeste has stripped its sound clean of romanticism. The music featured on the band’s latest slab of nihilism, Morte(s) Nee(s), is much more closer to a bands like Overmars, albeit more relentless and violent in its hardcore influenced outbursts. The pummeling is constant and breathing breaks are rare, as if Strapping Young Lad would have ventured deeper into sludge-country and lost all humor and love for mankind. The instrumental, elaborately named “(S)”, slows things down a bit to give the rhythms a much more lingering and menacing feel… perhaps akin to Gojira. Instead of preaching about the preservation of nature, however, Celeste seem to be more committed to destroying it.

The production isn’t as cold as it is crushing: perfect for maintaining the violent outbursts and attempts at self-restraint. There’s a definite black metal influence on the album, one that stems not from the past, but from the depressed. Morte(s) Nee(s) isn’t an album for every occasion. It doesn’t get you pumped up, riled up and ready to fight. It craves for submission to work out properly.

I wouldn’t call Celeste’s current sound apocalyptic like what I’d say of Neurosis’ Through Silver in Blood. The music doesn’t saunter in the horizon like a storm cloud waiting to go off; it doesn’t haunt the listener with impending doom. Morte(s) Nee(s) is more isolated, current. It speaks of here and now as it forces you to embrace its bleak visions. Yet, it is comforting. A good example of this is the 13-minute closure, “De Sorte que Plus Jamais un Instant ne Soit Magique” that starts out with murder and ends in an exhausted catharsis, its weary strings impregnating humanity into the dolor.

And unlike Neurosis’ undeniable classic, Morte(s) Nee(s) isn’t a particularly memorable album in the traditional sense. To me, it doesn’t convey a narrative to follow. Specific moments are lost with time. However, I don’t think it needs to be all that, as every minute is a consuming one. There’s no place for nostalgia. This is not poetry, but a primal tool to harness the darker emotions that we breed ― Morte(s) Nee(s) is a combat drug.

Denovali Records are known to harbor tranquil, stargaze bands that occasionally venture from post-rock deeper into our own oblivion, but brutality hasn’t been a word I would have associated with the label before. With Celeste and Morte(s) Nee(s), I think I need to re-evaluate.