Parisian quartet The Prestige live up to their name with a dizzying display of post-hardcore that’s as crushingly heavy as it is pensively expansive.
Following up from last year’s phenomenal Amer, The Prestige clearly only have one intention: to better and batter it. With Isthmos, both aims have been resoundingly achieved. A post-hardcore band at heart, this album is an excursion into sludgy heaviness and post-metal atmosphere that somehow never becomes too much, even as it sits with all the weight of the world on its shoulders.
As delicately as intro Léthé enters, first track proper Debris acts as the wrecking ball to any sense of calm or tranquillity. Enacting a vivid metaphor for the depression and inner turmoil that fuel the album, this destruction of peace serves to compound the darkness of what comes next.
Seething riffs struggle within vulnerable lyrics and urgent cries for help as Debris morphs into Father of None, where the darkness closes in to feel almost claustrophobic. Rose du désert clears the smoke to let in some air, with a majestic solo towards the end of its seven minutes that somehow only leads to more heaviness.
The album’s most significant segment comes via Noire nuit and its immediate follow-up The Ascend. Noire nuit is the focal point, musically reflecting it in the disorienting meter and downtuned sound that run amok inside the chaos of the suffocating darkness of the song. The Ascend carries this on, but with more reflection on what has been before, with introspection and melancholy the name of the game. Finally, The Sacrifice caps off the journey, allowing some catharsis to emerge from the darkness.
Isthmos is a contorted and writhing mass of anguished emotion driven by musicianship that rides the fine line between technicality and necessity perfectly. It's also an album that must be heard to be believed.
Verdict: 4/5
For fans of: Converge, Oathbreaker, Cult Of Luna
Isthmos is out now via Banshies.
