Review Summary: The cold march of death...
The realms of funeral doom metal have always pushed at the very core of tolerant listening and at one hour and twenty-four minutes, Ataraxie’s
Résignés stands resolute in a fixture of ill-boding attitude and longing despair. With a penchant bordering on the ultimate excessiveness the oft minimalism that leans towards the inevitability of death,
Résignés leaves out all the trivially based realms of positivity and replaces it with a heavy footed march to the headsman’s block. The void of suffering, loss and pain that leads squarely into the ever expanding shadow of French-doomsters Ataraxie’s discography increases, but doesn’t exceed its predecessor.
Despite this,
Résignés is a treat (as long as you’re into drawn out periods of loss and anguish) that grips the core of human emotion, resenting the brink just enough to disregard it completely. For most listeners, it’s going to come down to the sheer engagement, where immersive platitudes meet layered atmospherics and downright minimalism. “People Swarming, Evil Ruling” defines the very immersive essence that Ataraxie provide. "Coronation of Leeches” however, simulates a surrealist companionship between the realms of clarity and pure dissonance while incorporating how life can be balanced on a knife’s edge. The latter half of the track especially showcases the oft visceral, primal qualities of the human condition, without becoming too detached from our quieter, more purer mindsets. It's a formula often taken for granted but all the more perfected here.
Whether it be the immersive planes that Ataraxie parallel with fear and imperfection, adding dread to a world of uncertainty or the spiral of decay only released when our last breath expires,
Résignés deforms and yet defines our capacity to be human. Combining the marching dread of the title track or the monolithic pandering of tracks like "Les affres du trepas",
Résignés manages to paint a portrait of black and grey. It's this noir that traps, presses and suffocates its listeners into an unyielding bleak.
