French atmospheric black metal unit Dysylumn has announced 17 October as the release date for its highly anticipated fourth album, Abstraction. The album will come out via Signal Rex on CD and vinyl; the first track, "Abstraction III", has already been released.

Dysylumn formed in 2010 and has been something of an unsung "dark horse" of the French black metal scene ever since. Whilst exhibiting some of that scene's idiomatic traits - the robustness of the orthodox/religious school, the melancholy of its more lonerist school - the duo have recast them in vivid new iterations. Signal Rex made a blood pact with the band in 2020 to release its visionary second album, Occultation, on vinyl. The same year, Dysylumn impossibly eclipsed that modern classic with the staggering double-album Cosmogonie. Between the two recordings, the duo displayed a breadth of vision firmly rooted in black metal's noblest traditions - one aiming more for the hinterlands of creativity and experience. 

And so it goes with Dysylumn's long-awaited fourth full-length, Abstraction. Curiously titled, Abstraction is actually the duo's most immediate record; even on the surface, its five-song / 37-minute runtime seems relatively quick by comparison. However, to suggest that Dysylumn is shortchanging its still-swirling creativity by attacking more directly would be grossly missing the point. Gutted bass-throb and etheric guitar characteristically form the foundation, and the former sound gets more pensive and contemplative while the latter suitably slashes and surges with an unmatched amount of emotion. In fact, just isolating the guitar work of Sébastien Besson alone would render Abstraction an incredibly compelling experience, although it's his impassioned vocals along with the slippery-yet-stylish drumming of Camille Oliver Faure-Brac make the album an effortless exercise in point/counterpoint: a reinvigoration of black metal classicism on one hand and a defiant flipping of the script on the other, bypassing "progressive" and "post" tags not out of churlish disdain but rather as already-established signposts of no use to Dysylumn. Stargazing, wistful, and yet so full of vim and vigour - Abstraction hits emotional centres hard, without obfuscating their core creativity. From nascent flames to the final breaths of a flickering light... Link