By Jase Walker
In the new era of virality, some bands suddenly break through to the rest of the world in spectacular fashion but rarely in such an egregious fashion as Angine De Poitrine who’ve exploded across screens around the world with their mix of eye catching polkadot visuals, unusual outfits and similarly bizarre approach to math rock with microtones.
Initially I was about to skip the video when it landed in my reel scrolling algorithm but something told me to give it a moment and this has subsequently bloomed into a full blown obsession overnight. As a result I’ve ended up falling into a deep rabbit hole where I’ve tried to consume literally everything I can get my hands on with regards to this band so imagine my fervour when I have a chance to get an early listen to their forthcoming Vol. II album.
Six tracks, each with their own bizarre name that matches their nonsensical talking in their live shows and ‘interviews’. If you’ve seen the viral videos with regards to these, there’s a solid chunk of the album already out in the wild that’ll bring you into the whimsical world of Angine De Poitrine with looped phrasing from the guitar/bass combination of Khn matched against the tight, groovy drumming of Klek.
The first three tracks of ‘Fabienk’, ‘Mata Zyklek’, and ‘Sarniezz’ land me in familiar territory considering all of the videos that have done the rounds recently showcasing a lot more of the newer songs. Bizarrely catchy microtonal riffing all wrapped up in a nice math rock format that’ll scratch the itch for anyone who’s remotely into their left field approach to rock and metal. The kind of people that make the yearly pilgrimage to ArcTanGent have already been all over these so little wonder there’s such an outcry for Mr. James Scarlett to get them onto the lineup as a last minute edition despite the lineup already being complete.
What really caught me was the latter half of the album being a real treat, specifically with ‘Yor Zarad’ having what can only be described as moshpit bait and easily the heaviest segment they’ve ever done to date and I can imagine this’ll fuel chaos around the world. This one really stands out as a worthwhile track to hit the big peak in a live show when you’re driving the energy to new heights.
These songs definitely aren’t the most radio friendly of lengths, with most of them coming in at more than six minutes in length but I can’t really see that being a problem for most of the people that’d be sucked into this sort of thing. Each song has its own set of hypnotic and bouncy melodies that steadily become saturated as the looping adds layer upon layer while the drums build up the intensity along the way.
I’m already a die-hard math rock fan but this sort of oddball breakthrough act is probably what’s going to open the floodgates to a much wider audience as math rock has always been pretty niche due to its often complex nature. It’s not often bands with this sort of sound become a topic that’s on everyone’s lips, typically that falls to bands such as Bad Omens, Sleep Token or Spiritbox who’ve had similar explosions in popularity recently but seem generally more palatable to a wider audience.
Given the insane flood of interest in Angine De Poitrine, I can imagine the band themselves are somewhat perplexed by it but with an album like this I can see this is where things take off for them to dizzying heights.
This band and album are weird as hell, but that’s exactly what is needed and to quote my favourite YouTube comment on the video that introduced me to them, ‘AI could never’. Absolutely incredible stuff.
- ‘Vol II‘ will be released next Friday (3 April).