Ixion: Enfant De La Nuit

Artist: Ixion
Title: Enfant De La Nuit
Format Reviewed: MP3
Format Released: 9th November 2015
Reviewed By: Ben Chapman

Heavy guitars, washing new-wavey synth sounds, tender compositional temperaments, multi-instrumental talent, electronica's layered approach, and a trio of French doom-metal experimentalists. On paper, Enfant De La Nuit, the latest effort from Ixion, sounds like a good idea. On a computer screen, the idea sounds just as good as on paper. Through some speakers, I'm afraid to say, it sounds terrible.

Ghost In the Shell starts off all enigmatic. Dark and deep, the vast range of influences means the song could go anywhere, whenever it finally kicks in. The cheese-laden synth intro helps us stumble into a slowly forming rhythm, which seems set on working out to be quite a predictable and awkward sounding one at that. Sounding a bit too much like a dreamy film soundtrack, there's certainly an atmosphere of some sort, but a confusing and unfocused one. It's not until two and a half minutes in that we're given an actual riff to deal with. Apologies to fans of metal, industrial, or electronica, but this is a disappointing exercise across all its field of influence, since it seems that we're never given an actually arresting tune telling its own story, but rather a mash of forced gravitas. 

Allegiance doesn't do a lot for me either. An overly loud piano melody crudely tries to force some emotion upon the indulgent shredding, but overall it's a slowly dooming bore with some almost interesting 80s pop influences drawn in. The synth chords are usually a bit too overbearing behind the attempts of the other instruments, though the synth's melodic moments peak some interest and show off an admirable experimental tendency. That said, with the wooden bell synth hits it could also just be construed as Enya's chirpy plink-plonking Orinoco Flow, played with a sore throat and an insatiable, overly keen guitarist.

In Discovery we're given more time to explore the main composer's electronic influences, returning to the more cinematic feel we heard in the first track. Here, the synth melodies' wandering sounds are altogether relaxing, saddening, and profoundly alien, all serving to merit more than a nod to Jean Michel Jarre's work whilst carrying off a redemptive introduction. These explorative keyboard sounds, once the song blasts off, may as well have been jettisoned. Unfortunately this tasteful approach doesn't survive for long outside in the vacuum of the song's full length, which is sparse and inhospitable. The drumming, though hit hard, has little substance to provide a beat for, and with the track just about breathing above a confused halt, slowly, the floor toms lead our plod through this uninspiring series of crashes, which is a bit too subdued in its attempt at heaviness and atmospheric journeying simultaneously. It's too hard to tell if either goal has been achieved.

Doom is another slow exercise in cheesy riffs and slowly shifting piano patterns, that don't sound unpleasant, but just sad; though not even in a cathartic way, just in a boring one. Double bass pedal tries to inject some energy, but it's too little, too late. The Passenger features an intriguing choir-led intro under an almost latin-swing free form piano melody. Again a high sustain guitar riff screams out behind the shrilly pitched hold of a synth chord, anchoring the tune in mediocrity and slipping it nearly indistinguishably amongst the album's other tracks. Promised Land treats us to a small amount of electronic groove at the beginning, but unfortunately it's another song on this album where the intro is the only interesting or vaguely distinguishable part of the tune.

Though the album is certainly ambitious, and the clean lead vocal makes some nice additions sporadically, there's not really any great points that would warrant further listening for me personally. Unfortunately Enfant De La Nuit meanders too far, not taking with it any of the ridiculous fun of prog and not enough of the passionate energy of rock and metal, so that whilst there's a sincere musical attempt at adding a sombre, ambient depth to its songs' vison, this ambience waters down the heaviness, whilst the riffs sound cheesy and out of context, and the result is a spluttering lack of subtlety amongst the otherwise carefully layered composition. As the sums of its parts clunk together, often as slowly as they do painfully, Enfant De La Nuit makes for a challenging listen at best.