The origins of Enoid go back to the mid-nineties, when Sergio ‘Bornyhake’ Moplat started the project Pest. This Swiss guy is or was in many extreme projects, but I think Enoid, which actually is the successor of Organ Trails, with Organ Trails being the follow-up of higher mentioned Pest, might be one of the best known ones he’s involved with, and for sure one of the best.
With Exilé Aux Confins Des Tourments, Bornyhake has a fifth Enoid full length album, after 2013’s The New World Murder (Bergstolz), and it’s the first release since Summer 2014, when Lower Silesian Stronghold did release the Impetum In Tenebris split with Dizziness and Mortuus Caelum. For those interested: we published my fabulous and excellent review (what else?!) on November 10th 2014, so if interested (and why shouldn’t you) you know where to look.
Exilé Aux Confins Des Tourments (it must mean something like exiled on the borders of agonies) gets released in a partnership of Russia’s mega-label Satanath Records and smaller yet at least as promising label Black Plague Records. The album lasts for more than forty minutes and it consists of eight tracks. Except for the mastering and the artwork, Bornyhake did everything himself: song writing, performance / recording, production and mix.
Once again, Enoid crush, rape, torture and destroy in a sonic way. This band’s Black Metal is extremely, and I mean ‘extremely’, raw, grim and violent, in both execution and sound. The latter, the sound quality, is just marvellous (hehe, will I add ‘it’s just beautiful’, or is that too brutal?). There’s such an overpowering production involved, yet with inclusion of a fabulous mix. The rough-edged recordings come with a splendid equilibrium of all elements involved (instruments and vocals), with none too much on the foreground, and none denigrated towards the background either. It’s like a bloodied chainsaw, a taken the bit in one’s hand bulldozer and a ravenous pack of rabid monsters gathering to start a gospel choir. No, seriously, this misanthropic, hateful and blaspheme material truly impresses by the monumental sonic recording quality. Listen to the presence of those well-thought drum patterns, these rusty guitar lines, sulphur-breathing screams or dominant bass melodies…
…which easily brings me to the composing and execution of the material on Exilé Aux Confins Des Tourments. It’s highly melodious, including the essence of the nineties’ spirit. No, Enoid are not another uninspired Nordic-styled combo, for they really aim for an own sound, an own approach. But one cannot just ignore the essence of the Old School, which surely might be the main inspirational source (of all Evil). In general, everything blasts quite furious and fast, the merciless and devastating way. The high-speed approach thunders and hammers most of the time. But the intelligence of this material lies in the subtle variation in that high-speed approach. Fastness, in this case, means a grandiose balance in between ‘fast’, over ‘ultra-fast’, towards ‘pyroclastic whirlwind eruptionally blasting’. And what’s more, quite some passages decelerate that high-speed tempo. On top of it, it does not matter which tempo rules, but whole of the time the material balances in between different aspects of melody, from epic to aggressive, from extravert to angry. The many guitar leads, tremolo-laden, add a dimension of human ingenious on top of the bestial outbursts for sure.
For those interested in the lyrical side: everything is written and sung (hahaha, ‘to sing’ and the throat of Bornyhake in one single phrase; it’s a contradiction in terminis that says it all, the sarcastic way) in French. I do understand French, but if you do not: sorry, a pity, but not of my concern… No, seriously, the French lyrics deal – but I am pretty sure the smarter ones amongst you, dear readers, did have a clue – do not exactly deal with tolerance, peace and inter-human love. It represents the hatred, fear, pain and disgust of the composer, expressing Bornyhake’s vision on humanity and our society. An endless hate towards the world, flames in my eyes, blood on my hands, fury in my head. But suffering in my heart, a face marked for life, a body marked by hate, I’m drooling of your vein’s blood, I’m shrieking to Death… (freely-interpreted translation)…