Dirge
Elysian Magnetic Fields

Listening to Dirge (the French ones, not to be confused with the 200 other American, German, etc. Dirges—what creativity I might add) you can't help but bring up the giants of post-hardcore, Neurosis: the sounds go straight to the Oakland band, those same proto-apocalyptic emotions, but not the ones flaunted by extreme bands, physical, warlike, or spatial, or whatever, but that apocalypse of the soul, of the nightmare, that apocalypse of the senses, metaphysical, of pain.

Active for almost two decades, Dirge demonstrates mastery in maneuvering in a time when this genre has frayed, with bands all alike, in a sound amalgam that commands respect: influenced by the masters, yes, but not mere epigones for this reason, instead full of personality that differentiates them quite a bit from all those other bands that move, without having anything to truly say, in this genre. Endowed with a sound chock-full of an almost cursed atmosphere, ascetic, distant, in continuous flow, despairing: imagine a man, head bowed, tears furrowing the ground, silent, with a stone in his hands, weary of life's greed, heading to the nearest river, aware that the latter can give him nothing but more harm, more injustices, full to the brim with his own overflowing mistakes forming an intractable, unscalable wall; having reached his destination, standing on the shore, he pauses to search for at least some cheerfulness to distract him from what he's about to do, a hope, soon realizing that this final attempt is anything but founded, indeed, entirely absent from his entire existence. Dirge is this, they are despair personified, they are soldiers marching toward the end, they are the agony of a world in decay, they are the antithesis of well-being, they are heavy, distressing, slow, angry, contemplative, almost philosophical in showing such a layered skin of pain.

This is their fifth album, following that masterpiece named "wings of lead over dormant sea" (a double album containing 6 suffocating tracks, where the last one in the second disc lasted a beautiful round hour), and it's a new step forward, a step towards melody that makes everything a little more digestible, another great work, perhaps slightly below the previous one (but maybe I say this only because the season in which I'm about to listen to it isn't the most appropriate for such sounds). I couldn't even do a track by track review, given the work's inherently monolithic nature, I couldn't even tell you where the personality lies, I can only tell you that unlike many other bands of the same genre, if I close my eyes, and someone played their music without me knowing, well, I would recognize them without hesitation (ah, that’s where the personality lies, in recognizability).

"Elysian Magnetic Fields" is stunning in its caterpillar-like heaviness (like all the other works of those reviewed here), so refrain from listening to it if you still want to see the sun shine in the sky in this warm summer ahead, if you don't want the clouds of the subconscious to make space in you to uproot your soul and heart from your chest: I am a masochist regarding music, and I know that many others out there are akin to me and won't care about this warning of mine to make this work theirs which, without a shadow of a doubt, will rightfully enter my personal top ten of the end of the year.

Dirge is wonderful, period! And for once, I feel like recommending a work that, despite its almost total lack of originality, possesses such a profound vision that it gives you an hour so thrilling that it's not easily forgotten; am I exaggerating? It's my feelings doing the talking, isn't it? Now stop reading, make it yours, in the way you see fit, turn everything off, gaze at the ceiling, start it, and all of life will illustrate itself before you. Dirge is the sound of tomorrow, and if you really want to read something to give life to the images that the album exudes, take a "the road" in your hands (a masterpiece by Cormac McCarthy of "No Country for Old Men", illustrating the life of a father and son searching for the cool of the ocean in a world that has already seen the real apocalypse, its inevitable end, filled with gloomy and heavy moments in outlining the face of a society in the grip of unbridled survival), read it and you'll understand the true meaning of thrill!

Annihilating!