Sed Non Satiata
Mappo

Like a ship that has lost its horizon and its destination, I considered the Sed Non Satiata lost. A name that might not mean much to many (unfortunately), yet within the Old Continent at the beginning of the 2000s, they stood out as one of the most intriguing entities in the alternative scene. These guys hail from Toulouse and confirmed the robust health of the French scene in the niche genre of screamo at the time and still do today. Authors of a full-length of significant prestige, "Le Ciel De Notre Enfance", in 2005 they rightly stood alongside national touchstones like Daïtro, Belle Epoque, Gantz, Mihai Edrisch, Amanda Woodward, and more. They followed up in 2009 with a self-titled work, then darkness fell, the curtain came down. Without any news of a breakup, perhaps that's how naively I abandoned them: as we know, in screamo, managing to make two records, standing the test of five or six years is already a miracle, splits are the norm. All of this until a few days ago when, struck by nostalgia, I brought out that very debut from two thousand and five and started looking for some information about them. Plot twist. They resumed going on tour in 2012 and at the end of July, a new full-length was released by Echo Canyon Records, titled Mappo.

A latent dissatisfaction and the emergence of hidden emotions, within the melancholic eclipse of a past memory, a photograph of the present, or a hope for the future. Letting oneself be gently abandoned after a rude awakening and tormenting oneself in the fight for one's being. Wanting to react to the continuous dormancy of feelings. There is a romanticism that irradiates every single composition and the use of French in expressing one's thoughts not only adds a certain uniqueness to the proposal but makes everything so clear and tremendously enveloping, with hypnotic traits. The incipit of "Mappo" is tumultuous, but the essence of Sed Non Satiata quickly unfolds, opening to expansive sounds and vocal expressions that recall distant echoes. As yes, of the dual path proposed by the screamo world, which at first instance challenges the powerviolence vein and chaotically vomits out feelings in a disorganized manner without any filter, our heroes have always preferred the second option, namely to articulate and reflect by constructing elegant structures, emotionally corrosive and blending in with other realms. And so, screamo is crystallized and well blended with other stylistic solutions, primarily the dear old post-rock.

A journey in the face of a spectral sunset, where there’s no urge to rush, everything has its right time, and only the accompaniment of a tribal pace seems to take us away forever, before the new dawn born from the last moments of "Soma" forcefully reminds us to shine again. Arpeggios, chords, and riffs that represent vigorous jolts in the face of a never intrusive distortion drag us out of the abyss, in a cyclical rise and fall of rhythmic beats. It's a homogeneity of contrasts, it seems (and perhaps it is) an oxymoron, but "Mappo" lives throughout its duration with a well-orchestrated alternation of dissonances and deep breaks, with a fluid melody reigning as its leitmotif. The metronome of the situation is a voice capable of drawing iridescent harmonies and emotions, from a painful rasp to clean vocals to a warm, dark spoken word. Atmospheres are thus molded that culminate in anguished choruses or hand over the reins to instrumental explosions and circumscribe the Sed Non Satiata's path in a constant dualism between apprehension and resolution.

It’s a return with cinematic traits for the French group, crafted with great care and mastery. A work that is like morphine, in the good (metaphorical) sense of the term, and that gets Sed Non Satiata back on track and brings them back to prominence, representing one of the most delightful surprises of this 2013.