Review: Endless Floods ‘Rites Futurs’
It has been a good long while (seven years!) since Endless Floods recorded their last album, Circle The Gold, although I think I probably didn’t hear it until 2021 when the fabulous ÂGE ⱡ TOTAL album sent me scouting around the French underground. Many people seemed to hear despair and mourning in Circle The Gold, however, I found its bold emotionalism in doom refreshing and the record shocked and pleased me with its willingness to pull back almost to silence and stillness.
That restraint and use of extremely slow tempos and quiet is also part of the character of Rites Futurs. Where the previous album still landed with delayed weight and bellowed vocals like Pombagira, Endless Floods now almost entirely eschew the crush-by-distortion that would seem to be the defining feature of doom, but somehow without compromising on heft. Indeed, this could almost be a pitch for a Roadburn set with their ‘redefining heaviness’ mission statement.
Having created a certain set of expectations with those sentences, the listener may actually be surprised at how swiftly Endless Floods come to the point as L’Éclair immediately sets out their sound space, and that space is open and warm. Held by the movement of the guitars, we drift with gentle vocals, these beautiful and harmonised voices will carry us through the album safely. The space is like the last sun through trees at midsummer. All is light, but this is the peak. Lush, but speaking of the autumn closing and winter stillness that is foreshadowed in the setting of the sun.
In finding ways to express this feeling, Endless Floods reach towards some familiar sources, ranging across post-rock and emotive doom, and perhaps also more ‘folk’ traditions, such as on Muraille with its decidedly non-metal core progressions and muted ornamentation. This perhaps is what drew the Pombagira comparison to my mind earlier, as they also sought to find a path from straight-up heavy overwhelm to a more sonically and emotionally rich space and drew from a broad range of sources in doing so.
On the title track and album closer Rites Futurs, we get to hear that from this openness and drift, there is plenty of room for power when they get to it, and yet the torrent that crashes over us is somehow just the sketch of a shattering crescendo.
As it stands, Rites Futurs is due only for a cassette and digital release, and as such may not reach the audience that, in my opinion, it deserves. Part of me wonders however, how broad an appeal an album like this will find, sitting as it does outside both the swamp of dooming doomly doom bands and the wistful autumn woodland of floaty post-rock. To me though, this is an ‘ambassador’ album, by which I mean I would hope to be able to play it to all sorts of people and pique an interest in what humans can seek to do to express themselves, and the inventive ways they find to do it. An album with a clear voice, and something worth saying.
Label: Breathe Plastic Records
Band Links: Facebook | Bandcamp | Spotify | Instagram
Scribed by: Harry Holmes
