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Bosse-de-Nage (2012) is the self-titled third full-length album by US atmospheric black metal act Bosse-de-Nage. These guys had, up to and including this album, taken the curious approach of calling every full-length they released self-titled, so this album is more commonly known as Bosse-de-Nage III or simply III to differentiate it from Bosse-de-Nage (2010) and Bosse-de-Nage (2011), the latter being also known as II. They eventually broke this trend with their next full-length, All Fours (2015).
On III Bosse-de-Nage play the post-black metal form of the atmospheric sub-genre, which means tons of post-rock influences in both the heavy and softer sections of music, with no reliance on keyboards to create an ambience. For the most part the band's style is tastefully crafted and intriguing, very occasionally even hinting at an underlying progressive influence, though there are equally a couple of moments during the album's six tracks where it does seem as if their ideas could have used a little trimming down in order to become more coherent compositions, the tracks being mid to long length. The longest is The God Ennui and I'd say that this is especially evident there. But overall the band's music is very pleasant, with the exception of the intentional use of feedback to begin and close the release. That's pretty uncomfortable. Bosse-de-Nage aren't the only band of their kind I've heard make use of feedback and I struggle to understand what the deal with it is. Fortunately they limit it to the start and finish only.
What further characterises III as a record is its vocals. Primarily growled with some spoken words used in some places, the style used by frontman B. pushes Bosse-de-Nage's style away from the soothing post-black metal journey of the instrumentation and into the zone of depressive black metal. There's no better way to describe how his growls sound than to say that it seems as if he's upset about something all the time. This is even to the point that there are some instances in the album where it sounds like he's quite literally bawling his eyes out about something in growling form. I'm not sure what that could be but he sounds so fucking distraught about it that it actually makes those parts of the album difficult to listen to. It's like one of those really awkward moments when you're out in public and someone, usually a kid not getting their way, is making a scene. I find it highly doubtful that this is the image Bosse-de-Nage were intending to conjure up, but that's my impression of what these parts sound like.
Overall though, there's much more to praise here than not and maybe some listeners will find the vocal style appealing, though for my part I do think it detracts a bit from my total enjoyment of the album, which I have to describe as a difficult listen. That's not an uncommon occurrence with depressive black metal release of course, it's often part of the point. III is however such an album that hasn't yet managed to reward me for sticking with it as much as I'd like, though it's impossible not to acknowledge it as a very solid work from Bosse-de-Nage, despite a few issues.