Dyster — Le Cycle Sénescent

Dyster is a one man black metal band hailing from France. The product of one Nokturn,  Le Cycle Sénescent is his first album and was released in 2010 by Drakkar Productions. Now with Drakkar re-releasing all of its releases digitally through Bandcamp, Le Cycle Sénescent can be acquired legally online. For those who prefer physically copies, Drakkar still has some available from their webstore.

Dysters’s take on black metal is distinctly depressive, if you didn’t already guess that from the razor blade in the band logo. Not at all a unique concept but the depression is paired with some more uplifting, gentle guitar melodies that makes the overall mood a bit less hollow than most depressive black metal. It’s sort of a happy melancholy not unlike the kind Sweden’s Lifelover became famous for. The mood is not the only thing Dyster owes to Lifelover. There are sections of depressive blackened rock lifted straight from the Lifelover formula like on the instrumental “Freeways of Perdition” or “Chroniques D'un Asocial.” It’s not like Dyster tries to hide the influence: the album includes a cover of the Lifelover track “Sweet Illness of Mine.” Lots of bands wear their influences proudly on their sleeves and there’s nothing wrong with that – at least Norkturn attempts his own spin on this style by adding plenty of traditional black metal to the mix.

The problem with this approach is that he’s only partially successful. The black metal parts are pretty conservative in terms of riffing style (just tremolo picking and blasting) but the almost happy guitar tone and some of the riffs don’t sit well with me. Many of them attempt to capture some measure of beauty or happiness and it’s usually too much, draining the tracks of their staying power and coming off as sappy. I understand what Nokturn is getting at but it isn’t all together there. Another thing holding the album back is the poor vocals. Extremely artificial and distorted, they don’t convey any sense of the pain of being alive. Even worse are the scattered bits of almost clean vocals but thankfully these are rare.

Dyster’s Le Cycle Sénescent isn’t a total disaster but it’s not far from it. The depressive rock meets black metal is done better by Lifelover and the black metal is done better by pretty much every band. The lighter black metal riffs don’t work except for a small section on “Le Cycle Sénescent.” The most depressing thing about this album is that it’s over an hour long. It’s not the worst depressive black metal album I’ve ever hear (far from it in fact), but it’s not a pleasant experience, and not in the way it was likely intended.