Critic's evaluation
He is a kind of son, a happy and pleasant consequence of La Théorie Des Cordes. Zhorhann, a French project named after the Zoran equation taken from René Barjavel's book La Nuit De Temps, chose the end of the third quarter to announce Ainsi Parlait Hominina, their debut album.
It has no shyness. Like someone trying to impose their will, the melody arrives with its foot on your chest, with a force, pressure and precision that make it powerful in its dirty, acidic harshness, played by the duo of Heiva Arnal's drums and Mathieu Torres' guitar. Between grunge and flirting with the fields of nu metal and avant-garde metal, the song surprises by presenting an abrupt rhythmic break that takes the listener to a calm and gentle atmosphere. Now in the guise of jazz, the phrase that appears like an oasis in the midst of chaos features the swinging corpulence of Vincent Blandeau's bass. It's interesting to note that, in L'Homme À La Tête De Gelute, the oscillations between daze and torpor represent a kind of absurd playfulness. It's as if futility, superficiality and the utmost lack of opinion merged in the mind of an individual whose essence is empty, influential and childish. With references to a kind of agonizing progressive rock, L'Homme À La Tête De Gelute is notable for the use of double bass drums in heavy metal bursts drunk on guitars with ecstatic hard rock screams. It is inevitable, however, to realize that the guitar's unreasonably provocative roll, with its hypnotic tone as if uttered by snake charmers, offers the idea of manipulation, something that permeates all the melodic subdivisions of the song, which closes as if in the form of a melodic palindrome.
With a comical, light and infectious tone, the guitar takes the listener to a soft and sunny atmosphere with a smiling and bouncy guitar, as if it were in the rhythm of danceable rhythms like salsa or frevo. With the squeak of the rattle as the only element audible in the foreground and responsible for inserting rhythmic textures into the melody, Le Filleuls Ancestraux - Partie 1 has lo-fi as a genre fused into the sound recipe alongside blues transfigured into progressive virtuosity. With bursts of a brutal mix between metalcore and a heavy metal with violent undertones that even treads the border with thrash metal, Le Filleuls Ancestraux - Partie 1 is contagious in its Latin base that still has the capacity to drink from the water of jazz while seeming to talk about legacy, about evolution. About yesterday being used, behaved and propagated today.
It's hard not to think of Rush or Sons Of Apollo. It's virtuosity with a touch of gloom. This is where the stones sing and the darkness is drunk in a curious spectral blue hue. The guitar is hypnotic in its deep, intense and penetrating gaze, causing the bass and drums, in their basic roles, to remain as supporting players until further notice. Then Arnal pronounces, with a trotting, unison and dry systematic and simultaneous blow on the snare and bass drum, the announcement of a rhythmic break in the numbing plot. From then on, Intro (Si Si...) becomes a sexy interlude whose sound is almost like a fusion of Whole Lotta Love, a Led Zeppelin single, with War Pigs, a Black Sabbath single and the final instrumental of White Bird (Bring Your Armies Against Me), a Palace Of The King single. Dangerous, sensual, wild and with high doses of libido, Intro (Si Si...) ends up showing its true face by transforming itself into a Californian hard rock with eighties veins, but with European influences. With its harshly strident phrases, Intro (Si Si...) is breathlessness, impunity, rebellion, intolerance and selfishness. It's an exaggerated sense of vanity and condescension.
Disharmonious, dissonant. Chaotic. Between the out-of-tune roars of the guitar, a breeze of synchronicity breaks through the stunned and agonizing. In the guise of nineties pop punk mixed with debauched alternative rock, Le Flamant Rose features well-executed jam session phrases, with the bass playing a leading role, while the guitar goes into a psychedelic trance that transfigures into progressive mockery. Le Flamant Rose, with its anti-harmonic basic structure, metaphorizes the metamorphosis of man. A metamorphosis that can be interpreted in different ways, from maturity to the assumption of a confused conscience that leads to an existential crisis.
Without delay, she begins by reconstructing the same melody as in Les Filleuls Ancestraux - Partie 1. Between the sunny tempo and the acidity of progressive hard rock, Les Filleuls Ancestraux - Partie 2 has bursts of a more aggressive hypnosis than its older sister. More metallic and with sensually darker verses, the song surprises the listener by containing Latin tango roots amidst its dense aroma of stridency and acidity. Without difficulty, Les Filleuls Ancestraux - Partie 2 continues the plot of its predecessor, mixing notions of legacy, but also of chaos and pinches of irresponsibility.
Its beginning feels like an end. That moment when the musicians explode into punchy phrases to add pressure and a sense of accomplishment for themselves and the notion of wanting more for the listener. However, when the bass takes the lead with phrases of hard rock a la the Sunset Strip of the 80s, the guitar emerges between agonies of ecstasy while flirting with industrial rock. Able to mix even notions of hardcore into the recipe, with the help of the drums, it leaves Egoduc precise and with a contagious intensity. Of course, to surprise you, Zhorhann does a kind of little medleys containing snippets of reggae and soft rock phrases that contrast well with the industrial, strident and acid base of the song. With this recipe, Egoduc seems to counter the culture of ego, personalism and an exaggerated sense of condescension. After all, between its peaks and troughs, the track contrasts the need to be served and the inordinate importance with the disappointment of not being obeyed.
The night sky is clear. There are no clouds, just the intense moon and bright spots scattered across the dark immensity. Thus, the gloom begins to take over the energy exuded by the melody, which is still under construction, a melody drawn out, at the moment of the introduction, only by a quiet guitar and the timid tinkling of the ride cymbal, offering glimpses of what may become the rhythm of the song. Soft and serene in its sensuality, Sweet Acid explodes in contained phrases compared to the punches of the previous songs, but it brings with it a captivating sweetness and sensitivity that manages to leave the acid in the background. Even so, the acidity is an unavoidable ingredient on the palate. Immersed too much in this entirely progressive dish, it brightens up the delirious echoes of nascent industrial rock.
Rough and with an impulsive intensity. Since its awakening, with infusions of thrash metal in its ecosystem, the song comes with a tremulous aggression hitherto unseen in Ainsi Parlait Hominina. Between the base guitar that keeps the frown angrily closed and the agonizing lead guitar, Dieu Sirote Le Sang has its oases of torpor from the jazz-based jam sessions that soften the hatefulness. With fade-out effects indicating the closing of sections within the same chapter, the song mixes stoner rock notions with a progressive dissonance that flows towards the apex of chaos. This is where thrash metal really reveals itself. Pronounced between bloody roars, although powerful, it is a subgenre with a weak stance in the song, easily influenced and hypnotized by the delights of progressive metal. With moments of total protagonism of the strident bass, Dieu Sirote Le Sang is definitely the darkest and most meaningful song on the album, as it places the figure of the maximum divinity consuming life in an act of shapeless cannibalism. Its melody, its pleas, its mockery and its screams are simply the sound of chaos and disorder taking hold among men who lack reason, sense and respect. It is the sound of instinct, of will, of the blindness of hatred and anger. And nothing more.
It's a kind of utopian bible. A book of laws and behavioral analyses that codifies the entire new culture of man. Ainsi Parlait Hominina is yesterday, today and tomorrow combined in a dialogue that is not verbalized, but whose sensitivities that overflow from every melodic corner are capable of dictating man's path in modern reality.
With the album, Zhorhann proposes that the listener take a look at himself and his peers scattered throughout the different social circuits. The questions of who am I, where am I and where am I going definitely lose their value when placed in a context where the depth of evaluations surpasses conscience, reason and morality.
It is difficult, therefore, not to get lost in oneself, in the discoveries of one's own actions and in the perception of one's impurities transfigured into social normalities. This is man. That is a thinking individual within a community of equal reasoning capacity. In the album, manipulation, anger, hatred, enjoyment, desires, wisdom and instinct are interconnected by a single cord, that of essence.
That's why Ainsi Parlait Hominina calls even faith and its dogmas into question. After all, in his last breath of thought, Zhorhann shows life being consumed and devastated by the one who created it. It's a clear metaphor not only for giving up, but also for sadness at what man has come to do and does in the face of his realm of interests and manipulations.
As an instrumental product, therefore, every note, every drumbeat, every sonar is important to verbalize the emotions that the album exudes. Hugo Lemercier made the guitar, drums and bass actors capable of assuming different personalities with such ease and versatility. As such, the instrumental trio took the album to scenarios of avant-garde metal, jazz, grunge, heavy metal, blues, thrash metal, metalcore, progressive rock, hard rock, hardcore, industrial rock, pop punk, soft rock, reggae, alternative rock and stoner rock. All with acid, strident and dark touches.
Rounding off the technical scope is the cover art. Signed by Stéphanie Artaud, it is, to say the least, literal. As the album itself proposes a dialog about the way man lives, the artist has highlighted, as the central character of her painting, a figure who, due to the multiplicity of elements in his clothes, is a court jester dressed as a soldier. Through bodies, the act of death, flaming flames and a brilliant, exoteric night sky, Stéphanie's work offers a quick glimpse into man's aggression, impunity, fury, delicacy and serenity.
Released on 09/15/ 2023 via Luminol Records, Ainsi Parlait Hominina is the sound of man's speech in instrumental virtuosity. His sovereignty, his relationship with the evolution of the species and his inconstancy are represented with intense, profound and dissonant melodies that call into question reason, morality and, above all, the concept of the logic of thought in the modern age.
