Released by: Finisterian Dead End
Release Date: October 25, 2024
Running Time: 61:35
Score: Infinity squared/10
Hello, good people who read Decibel Warfare. The people who run the website were foolish enough to ask if I would write for them so here we are. My name is Dark Juan. It isn’t, but a nom-de-plume is necessary because I work in children’s homes and telling you my real name would be a safeguarding violation, so you will now forever know me as Dark Juan. I am British and more specifically from Yorkshire, so be grateful for the printed word because you would not be able to understand my accent. Hey kids, do you know what a thruff-stean is? Dark Juan does…
I was going to be fuelled by lots of coffee, for which I would pay later as my nervous system thrummed with anxiety, and I babbled absolute nonsense about matters aeronautical for several hours, except Mrs Dark Juan has supped it all and left me bereft, so tea it is. Only the dogs are here in Crow Cottage with me. Mrs Dark Juan has left me unsupervised again, you see, as she now has a studio and creates her nightmarish masterpieces there instead of inflicting them on my already delicate metal state at home and therefore leaves me alone and the Devil makes work for idle hands which requires me to distract myself. This does have the downside of me having no one to talk to which means that you lot out there in the world at large get the benefit of my wisdom rather more frequently than you normally would. Plus, it’s great procrastination to avoid completing my NVQ 5 (which is equivalent to a degree, my American friends!), which isn’t at all important for my career progression, oh no! So, my writing is serviceable in more ways than one!
As I have been left to my own devices and I have no beer in the house, I have therefore elected to call into action the esteemed Platter of Splatter ™ and had a rummage through the review queue and have selected a band from France called Ixion to share my thoughts about, and this album, “Evolution”, is a combining of three EPs (“Extinction”, “Restriction” and “Regeneration”) which were released throughout 2024 to form the coherent piece they were always meant to be and concern themselves with the themes of humanity, androids, their interactions and post-humanism.
Let us plunge into the depths of this one, then. Care to join me?
Jesus, this music is the very epitome of lush. Nothing is spared in the instrumentation or production of this album. The vocals are absolutely fucking gorgeous and the music a shimmering, coruscant melding of My Dying Bride, Gunship, Soldat Hans and Pink Floyd. Ixion weld together the melodic, skyrocketing sound of Synthwave with dour Gothic Doom, dreamy, ethereal Drone and Shoegaze and some seriously awesome, yet not all obnoxiously complicated Progressive Rock and this chimeric beast is... is… is…
It's just totally fucking amazing, to be fair. There are no demerits. Every composition is exquisitely crafted and performed with so much heart and soul I’m surprised the band’s lifeblood isn’t pooled on the floor where they have opened hearts and veins for our listening pleasure.
The first two songs on the album, ‘The Withering of The Flesh’ and ‘In Fear of the Machines’ combine the sexy sensuousness of Synthwave with the hard-edged elegance of Gothic Doom perfectly and the vocals are rich and simply jaw-dropping in their magnificence, as well as being meaty as fuck in the Metallic aspects of the music, whereas ‘Breaking the Code’ marries almost Air (French, and very unique, Pop band) like whimsy and robotic vocals with a serrated, deep-throated roar and the music vacillates wildly between maudlin, yet beautiful melodies and some seriously heavy-duty plank spanking. Whereas ‘Shades of Time’ evokes the icy cold Industrial of Godflesh and warms it with cut-glass, ethereal vocals.
The whole album is a thing of elegance and sophistication yet fraught with febrile danger. An assassin in an immaculately cut Savile Row suit. A beautiful lady vampire in a silk cocktail dress and wearing perfect makeup as she entertains possible victims at a soiree of incredible taste and discretion.
Words are already failing me. It’s too much and I can’t cope.
Every single pleasure centre in Dark Juan’s brain is buzzing. If you wired me to a CAT scan, my brain would be lit up like Blackpool Illuminations. Ixion hit every single mark that I have for good music so hard that there’s exit wounds the size of dinner plates in my back. This album is EVERYTHING. It drips with heartbroken emotion, flails at the dying of the light, roars in furious defiance at the unfairness of the world and screams bloody murder with the desire for revenge. And it does all this with some of the most satisfying instrumentation and arrangement I have ever heard. The music defies description and beggars belief. Dark Juan would never have though that Doom Metal and Synthwave would dovetail together so… so stunningly.
The Electronic parts of the music offer light and shade and changing movements that beguile the unsuspecting listener and offer a counterpoint to the Metallic passages, which would otherwise be, how can I put this, remarkable but in a less effective way. It is the influence of the electronics in this music which makes it transcendent. They lift the music beyond mere Metal and turn it into a wholly different beast, a cybernetic powerhouse rather than a musclebound meat machine.
Also, being as it is the combination of three Eps, this album is a mighty monster to ingest in a single sitting, being composed of SIXTEEN tracks that ooze intelligence, but in a different form than say, The Chronicles of Manimal and Samara, being as they are the benchmark in Dark Juan’s head for people who are entirely too fucking clever and intelligent for their own good – Ixion are not as musically intrepid as TCOMAS, for example, but they don’t fucking have to be because their music is just as special in its unique way and shares the same absolute disdain for genre boundaries as Dark Juan’s favourite UK-based duo. Seriously, a TCOMAS/ Ixion live show would have Dark Juan wetting his pants with excitement and causing the West Yorkshire sex wee flood prevention system to be close to overload. Its already getting there just by listening to Ixion’s fucking EPIC music in my house. Even though the smallest Smellhound is trying to destroy the spell I am currently under by shouting at every single fucking passer-by outside the house. I am going to exile him to the yard shortly.
To sum up – If you like your music to be intelligent, unique, heavy as fuck yet still melodic and absolutely capture you with its essence, then, ladies, gentlemen and people of all other genders, I present Ixion to you. I have never heard music which is so atmospheric, so compelling, so utterly ALL - CONSUMING.
You all SRIOUSLY NEED TO STOP WHAT YOU ARE FUCKING DOING, RIGHT NOW, AND BUY THIS RECORD AND BASK IN THE ABSOLUTE MAGNIFICENCE OF IXION! They have totally fucked up what was a pretty fixed top ten of the year and now Dark Juan needs to rethink it again, but here’s a spoiler – Ixion are most definitely in there. Very highly in there.
Message ends. Apart from the Patented Dark Juan Blood Splat Rating System…
The Patented Dark Juan Blood Splat Rating System (Le système breveté d'évaluation des éclaboussures de sang Dark Juan, pour mes bons amis francophones. Mon Dieu, j'adore la scène musicale extrême française. Vous m'avez déjà donné Fange et P.H.O.B.O.S et maintenant vous m'avez offert l'un des plus grands groupes que j'ai jamais entendus au cours de ma misérable putain d'existence à Ixion. Merci France, merci beaucoup. J'aime votre pays, votre peuple et votre musique. Je suis un francophile britannique maintenant. Si je peux m'identifier comme un hélicoptère d'attaque Apache si je le souhaite, grâce à un monde devenant plus tolérant et compréhensif, alors je revendique une ascendance française!) awards Ixion infinity squared/10 because this is rarest of rare things, an utterly, terrifyingly, shockingly perfect work.
TRACKLISTING:
The Withering of the Flesh
In Fear of the Machines
The Weight of Ignorance
A Chimeric Dream: Part I
Afterlife
The Laws of Life
Breaking the Code
A Chimeric Dream: Part II
The Advent
Turning Point
Give up the Ghost and Pen Your Eyes
Second Birth
The First Outing
Shades of Time
Necropolis
In Search of the Absolute
LINE-UP:
Yannick Dilly
Julien Prat
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