For more than a decade, the French post-rock band Fall Of Messiah have made tingly, majestic post-rock that draws on screamo and metal, doing everything in their power to sound as huge as possible. Their songs are long and dynamic, and they build to whirling, crushing climaxes. Most of the time, there aren’t any vocals, but when a human voice does show up, it’s in strangulated-screech mode. It’s a style of music that’s both comforting and heavy, and they’re good at it.
Like the UK’s Hidden Mothers, another band that showed up on this here website today, Fall Of Messiah belong in the same category as Deafheaven or Envy or fellow Frenchies Alcest. (The genre designator that people tend to use is “blackgaze,” but that’s way too clumsy for music this elegantly intense.) Today, Fall Of Messiah have followed up 2016’s Empty Colors with a new album called Senicarne. It’s pretty and cathartic and layered and vast, and it’s got production that captures every glinting guitar sound in crystalline clarity. That’s all you can ask from a record like this. Stream it below.
Senicarne is out now on Holy Roar Records.
