AOP Records has announced November 20 as the international release date for "Disaster Triumphant," the fifth album from BONJOUR TRISTESSE.
The project plays atmospheric black metal rooted in contempt for industrial civilisation, grief for a dying planet and reverence for the natural world — weaving sadness, wrath, alienation and inner emptiness together with a strength that comes from resilience and from standing alone against everything.
The title comes from a line by Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno: "The Enlightenment has always aimed at liberating men from fear and establishing their sovereignty. Yet the fully enlightened earth radiates disaster triumphant."
Founder Nathanael, also of HERETOIR, drew heavily on the pair's "Dialectic Of Enlightenment" for the record. The book argues that the Enlightenment was double-edged: it reined in superstition and religion, but subjected humanity and the natural world to entirely new constraints through technological progress, industrial civilisation, the myth of human supremacy and the consequences of mass society. A critique of that "enlightened" yet thoroughly life-denying and nature-destroying civilised world runs beneath most of the album. Elsewhere the lyrics turn to loss, grief, melancholy, interpersonal feeling and the wish to withdraw from a world sinking further into chaos by the day.
The cover art by Abismo Black Arts works the same ambivalence, illustrating the core ideas of the book and the album at once.
The first track, "Tomb Of Hope," is streaming now via AOP Records.
The structure of "Disaster Triumphant" is worth noting on its own. It is five tracks across roughly 47 minutes, and four of those run between ten and twelve and a half minutes — long-form pieces given room to build rather than songs in any conventional sense. The only exception is "Lingering In The Twilight Of Shadows," a two-minute passage sitting between the third track and the twelve-minute title piece that closes the record.
"Disaster Triumphant" track listing:
- The Heights Of Despair [11:02]
- At The Mountains Of Silence [11:45]
- Tomb Of Hope [10:22]
- Lingering In The Twilight Of Shadows [1:55]
- Disaster Triumphant [12:20]