MALEPESTE / DYSYLUMN “Ce Qui Fut, Ce Qui Est, Ce Qui Sera” Digipak

Although split albums generally exist as two seperate EPs joined together on one format, sometimes essentially being nothing more than throwaway tracks by both bands involved, Ce qui fut, ce qui est, ce qui sera goes a different route and exists as a work breathing unity of aesthetic and focus in flow. Both Malepeste and Dysylumn are French black metal entities, both with unique and yet also unifying traits. Both bands formed in 2010 and each have an album to their respective names, and more importantly, both Malepeste and Dysylumn share a brotherhood of sorts which sees them performing ritualistic collaborations on the live front.

Now, within the totality of Ce qui fut, ce qui est, ce qui sera, the full sulfurous splendor of Malepeste and Dysylumn is on display. Brimming with light and shade - and darkness, and darker darkness - serpentine songwriting and vitriolic violence, iron-wrought muscularity and beyond-the-shade atmosphere, Ce qui fut, ce qui est, ce qui sera is an album of dualities, of contrasts skillfully harnessed under the banner of black metal. The overt characteristics of French black metal - the robustness of the orthodox/religious school, and the melancholy of its more lonerist school - are fully represented here, but recast in vivid new iterations.

Malepeste are up first, and bewitch right from the beginning notes of the accurately titled "Prologue." From there, the stench of brimstone is potent, weaving a spell most serpentine, breathtakingly capturing their live essence, where the sense of ceremony is of the utmost importance: incense and candles, bones and hangings, total and utter austerity. Indeed, Malepeste's half of Ce qui fut, ce qui est, ce qui sera are litanies to the fall of man, sprung forth from minds dedicated to the mysteries of the beyond. Then, Dysylumn follow with four tracks of their own, and with equal potency and intensity. Complementary in their bewitching swirl, Dysylumn take an altogether more wounded path, shot through with a sense of suffering that's blanching to behold. True to their aims, the band was initially formed as a solitary project of ex-Antropofago guitairst Sébastien Besson as a tribute to a loved one who decided to walk on the path of death; here, their evolution through the years takes flight by paradoxically probing the depths, concluding with the split album's "Épilogue."

Translated into English as "what once was, what it is, what it will be," Ce qui fut, ce qui est, ce qui sera artfully lives up to its title, securing both Malepeste and Dysylumn's rising status in the international black metal underground.