Album Review: Les Anges Morts – Desist for #MetalChronicles

Artist: Les Anges Morts
Title: Desist
Label: Fluttering Dragon Records
Release date: November 25th, 2024
Country: Italy
Format reviewed: High-quality digital recording

Album Review: Les Anges Morts – Desist for #MetalChronicles via Fluttering Dragon Records by Pegah

Les Anges Morts (“The Dead Angels”) is an old-school industrial project by Italian artist Maurizio Landini, also known for his dark ambient work under the alias Onasander. Desist marks the project’s full-length debut, released on CD through Fluttering Dragon Records.

When I first encountered the cover art, its stark simplicity suggested a work of emotional and conceptual depth. As I listened, I realized I was right. This is an album immersed in apocalyptic themes, and what follows is my interpretation of its soundscape and symbolism.

The opening track unfolds with an unsettling sense of presentiment. It feels like a “Passage”, one that carries the listener from the present moment into the depths of destruction. It’s a slow, inevitable transition toward the end of the world—and this is only the beginning. “Black Harvest” drifts into a more atmospheric realm, yet never sheds the album’s oppressive tone. Its title alone evokes visions of soul-reaping in the end times—death sweeping across scorched lands, or perhaps the aftermath of war, collapse, and decay. The voice rose from every corner, echoing, like spectral warnings of the inevitable. It feels as if the track is illustrating the coming darkness.

“Absolute Nothingness” plunges the listener into a terrifying soundscape, portraying a world fully consumed by darkness. The track evokes a landscape gripped by cold, lifeless hands—a vast, post-apocalyptic void where everything familiar has been erased. Its immersive layers pull the listener deeper, as if being swallowed by a black hole that expands relentlessly. “Mind of Vacuity” follows with a sharp, high-pitched opening like a sonic warning. The title itself embodies a central paradox: a ‘mind’ that contains nothing, a consciousness hollowed out. The track embodies that contradiction, becoming one of the album’s thematic anchors: the mind of mindlessness.

“Noxious Forge” conjures a bleak landscape where the void has fully devoured life. Nothing remains—no breath, no movement, no trace of the living. Its dark soundscape becomes increasingly rhythmic and mechanical, emphasizing the relentless repetition of this final cycle, grinding on until the very end. In “Outer Threat”, the narrative widens. The world is now fully poisoned by unconsciousness, and a greater force looms overhead. The track’s voice feels ghostly, almost prophetic, stripping away any lingering hope. It speaks not to comfort, but to prepare: reminding us that we can no longer trust the promise of a tomorrow. It’s as if the track readies us for eternal darkness, where even time itself collapses.

And finally, they arrive. In the title track, “Desist”, the narrative voice becomes warped and broken, as if seized by the very force it once warned against. It repeats the command—Desist, desist, desist—over and over, like a hypnotic chant meant to wear down resistance and force surrender. The soundscape is suffocating, seductive, inescapable. The message is clear: stop fighting, give in, let go. When the final echoes fade, we are cast abruptly back into reality. As listeners—drawn into this world from the very first track—we’re left haunted by a lingering question: What can we do if one day this descent becomes real? 9/10

Onasander
Bandcamp
Instagram
Facebook

Label
Website
Bandcamp
Instagram
Facebook

9/10  Epic Storm
**Please support the underground! It’s vital to the future of our genre**
#WeAreBlessedAltarZine
#TheZineSupportingTheUnderground