(Andy Synn decides to shake things up a little with the genre-blending new album from Point Mort)
Whenever you’re writing about a band like Parisian “post-genre” provocateurs Point Mort – whose sound combines elements and influences from (Post) Metal, (Post) Hardcore, Alt-Pop, Rap, Electronica, and more – it’s often hard to know quite where to begin.
After all, while comparisons and references to the likes of The Ocean and Oathbreaker, Leprous and Latitudes, Rolo Tomassi and Refused are certainly valid (though by no means exhaustive) they’re never going to really capture just how defiantly – and potentially divisively – the French quartet resist easy categorisation.
But, much as an expert chef is capable of taking a concoction of ingredients that wouldn’t normally work together and turning them into a Michelin-starred meal, so too have Point Mort taken an array of sounds and styles and combined them into a delicious seven song smorgasbord named Le point de non-retour.
To continue this (admittedly slightly strained) metaphor, if the intricately arranged and impressively powerful blend of bass, drums, and guitars (provided by Damien Hubert, Simon Belot, and Olivier Millot and Aurélien Sauzereau, respectively) are the rich, meaty substance of this particular meal – equally capable of bringing the heaviness in a way you can sink your teeth into as they are tantalising your musical tastebuds with moments of emotionally evocative melody and immersive, electronic-tinged ambience – then the vivid, visceral, and wildly varied vocals of Sam Pill are the secret sauce which makes the album really zing.
That’s not to downplay the vital role of the band’s instrumental backbone, whose performances (running the gamut from the barn-burning blastbeats and head-banging riffs which propel the furious first half of “An Ungrateful Wreck of Our Ghost Bodies” and the electrifying mix of punky metal and poppy melody that is “Skinned Teeth” to the weighty, churning grooves of “Iceur” and the majestic melodic catharsis of climactic closer “Der”) are just as diverse and dynamic in their own way, but there’s no question that Pall’s electric, eclectic delivery – raving shrieks giving way to riveting harmonies, which in turn make space for plosive, rapid-fire rhyme-patterns and off-kilter vocal oddities – adds a certain unique spice to the band’s genre-spanning sound.
There is, of course, always the possibility that certain additives and ingredients will be a little too spicy for more reserved palates – the weirdly poppy bursts of Mathcore-inflected madness which punctuate the shape-shifting slow-burn of “The Bent Neck Lady” might be a step too far for some, while the provocative Pop-meets-Prog-meets-Post-Rock/Metal of the title-track (replete with some wonderfully unorthodox and unpredictable vocal embellishments) may require some extra time to fully appreciate its deft mix of competing and contrasting flavours – but for me this is one record which just gets better with each and every bite.