Borgne's brand of atmospheric black metal has been infected with industrial leaning since 2015's Règne des morts, and each album since, including 2018's [∞] and 2020's Y have only threatened to make those leanings a fully-fledged part of their sound. Temps Morts is where that finally happens. Now, I don't claim to be an expert on Borgne's discography, which goes as far back as 1998, nor the shitload of other projects from the mastermind Sergio Da Silva (aka Bornyhake), so maybe I am wrong about how significant the increase in the presence of industrial elements is. And with me finding out about the band through Apothecary's review of Y and its subsequent MSA nomination, I was mostly surprised that Borgne already came out with a follow-up a little more than an year later.
I mean, it's still clearly an industrial black metal album done by an atmospheric black metal band, so there is a lot of the residual atmosphere that sometimes lingers in either a cosmic or a natural atmosphere, and also a lot of the band's previous dark ambient touches, but is now synthetized into an evil and mechanical one through the industrial coldness. There's obviously a lot of Blut Aus Nord and Aborym to be found here, but Temps Morts finds a way to be its own malevolent beast. It's more expansive in the way it handles the atmospheres than a lot of its peers because of it.
And a word of caution: this is a pretty long album, at 73 minutes. I was expecting it to feel more like a chore because of its length, but surprisingly Temps Morts is pretty well adjusted to filling that runtime with both the cold mechanical feel, the ample dark atmosphere, and its own sense of catchiness in its melodies so that it doesn't feel forced into that runtime. And it shows versatility with how it shifts from filthy to melodic, and it does so by blending the depths of its textures with the crushing riffs and haunting melodies. And you know that sometimes you just need a drum machine to pound you into oblivion. Temps Morts does that.
So, excuse my lack of extensive familiarity with the back catalog, but from the little I was able to gather, even at this point there is a lot of growth from release to release, and this is certainly the most I ever felt enticed by a Borgne album. Though maybe some cutting might have increased its potency, there's more than enough worthwhile material here to make this one of the best industrial black metal albums I've heard lately.
