Les Discrets are a band hailing from France that really shook up the metal scene with their debut called Septembre et ses dernières pensées (Google Translate gave me a translation that reads September and his Final Thoughts, I don’t think that’s a one hundred percent accurate but oh well) back in 2010. The album freshened up the blackgaze scene with completely clean vocals and some interesting tracks.
Ariettes oubliées (oubliées means forgotten) came two years after the debut and it further solidified the band’s place in the blackgaze scene with a slightly better songwriting and more progressive elements. The music stayed in blackgaze waters but it showed how a band can, and should, evolve. It was longer, and overall more enjoyable than the debut.
We had to wait five full years for the continuation of Les Discrets saga. Five long years during which the band embarked on a couple of tours, released three EPs but no one was ready for this. Prédateurs is a strange beast, almost completely abandoning metal elements, keeping some shoegaze parts while at the same time showing that Les Discrets wandered to completely new lands.
The album starts with an eponymous intro that’s very bleak, sounding like the beginning of some suicidal BM or maybe funeral doom record. But, as soon as Virée Nocturne starts playing all that depressive groundwork laid by the intro just vanishes. The song sounds like some trip hop, with lots of electronica, and ultimately disappoints.
The album keeps up the same pace, more or less. There are tracks that sound like a bad copy of Ulver, others aren’t that bad. Vanishing Beauties is a solid one, combining haunting vocals and some solid guitar work to create a pretty solid melancholic journey through the night. Unfortunately, these moments are rare. The album features just a couple of very solid tracks, while the rest is filled mostly with subpar compositions, weak efforts like Lyon - Paris 7h34 or The Scent of Spring.
Fleur Des Murailles starts weak but the song manages to pull itself up from the mediocrity with phenomenal industrial elements, making it sound like something coming from Cult of Luna’s Vertical. Le Reproche has a the-end-of-summer vibe, making you fell like tomorrow the sun will set way sooner than today; it’s a good song. The rest of the album just isn’t as good as those couple of standouts.
Songs have no structure, won’t make you feel like listening to an album that was five years in the making, and are just easily forgettable. It’s a shame really since we waited five years for this. The album is very short (just over forty minutes), the shift in style is ultimately disappointing, and there are no songs that will immediately stick in your brain. Prédateurs is the weakest record Les Discrets ever released, and it shows a band that has new ideas but doesn’t know how to channel them into something capable of keeping attention for more than just a couple of spins. A real shame.
