Band:	Ataraxie
Album:	Résignés
Style:	Death metal, Funeral doom metal
Release date:	March 2019

01. People Swarming, Evil Ruling
02. Résignés
03. Coronation Of The Leeches
04. Les Affres Du Trépas

Why the fuck are funeral doom albums so fucking long?

OK, this could actually be two albums, since it's two CDs of a little more than 40 minutes each, but there's no conceptual difference to say that this is a twin album or anything. This is just a long-ass fucking album. Thank God that Ataraxie are amazing and make up for it. Instead of a boring slob of music, these Frenchmen craft such gargantuan behemoths of despair and angst that feel colossal. It doesn't stray far from what they've been doing for the past (almost) 20 years, but they've always managed to be a cut above the rest.

One of my quarrels with funeral doom besides its monstrous length is how saturated it has become and how unengaging most of the bands have started to sound, which wouldn't be much of an issue for an album lasting 40 minutes, but in a genre that constantly pushes over the hour-mark, it gets pretty tedious to hear such flimsily indulgent sad atmosphere without much of a punch. There's only so long you can hear that same crushing riff and that monotonous growl in an extremely low tempo with the only variation from it being the clean piano sections, which is a formula that is getting about as generic as thrash metal, and at least thrash metal is engaging. So that doesn't work for a lot of bands. But for some fucking reason it works for Ataraxie and I think I'm getting the hang of why.

Résignés just feels so passionate in how crushing it is. Even the slower, more monotonous moments which remind me of generic funeral doom have such an intensity to them; the vocals especially, while treading in familiar territory actually convey despair and angst for once. And not only the vocals, but the guitar work is especially worthy of praise. But Ataraxie really shine in how little they shy away from picking up the pace to create some very suffocating and subjugating atmospheres closer to some death doom metal that offer some welcome variation to the formula, whereas if it was just the fast-paced or just the slow-paced it would have been a much harder ordeal to endure, even with how engaging it feels.

Perhaps it would be more adequate to listen to this as two separate albums, but as it is, even with its gargantuan length, it is thankfully filled with gargantuan music as well. I don't expect Ataraxie to change their formula for their future records, though I'd be curious to see them try, so even if they don't, they've proven to be more than worthwhile. You're next in line before the headsman. Resign.