Borgne - Renaître de ses fanges (2025)

Of all the black metal bands out there that go relatively unnoticed, I think that Switzerland's duo Borgne might be one of the most worthy. 27 years of material, much of which is good, and has only gotten better with their infectious recent records like Y and Temps morts. Renaître de ses fanges does seem like a slight step backwards in quality to those, but all of the bands captivating mechanisms are retained for an experience that is overall rewarding. This is 'industrial' black metal, largely delivered through the beats, which are certainly caustic, cold and machine-like, but they're not layering in a lot of the clanking and whirring and techno instrumentation that defines a lot of other acts that hybridize the genres. Really, this is atmospheric and even traditional black metal with the programmed drums and just a few embellishments like spacey, ambient, slightly noisy passages, striking piano sounds, etc. It's not corpse-painted Ministry.

The production is pretty great, just like the last couple efforts, but with an added sheen of rawness, where everything simmers in its glorious, fell majesty. The tracks are almost all on the longer side, from 7-10 minutes, but I rarely felt like any inherent monotony outweighed the immersion. The guitars have a real noxious distortion to them which seems to hover around the chords like an aura of decay, but the melodic tremolo picked lines just blaze straight through, and Lady Kaos' keys settle just below them to create a constant, oppressive level of atmosphere without sapping away from the aggression of the guitars. Bornyhake's vocals are nothing too terribly unique for the genre, but they always sound like they're hovering over the brink. Some of the tunes have a blasted structure, others a more melancholic, mid-ranged flow like the closer "Royaumes de poussière et de cendre". There's still a little bit of a death metal subtext to some of the lower riffing patterns, but not as prominent as on the excellent "Swords of the Headless Angels" from 2021.

And that's pretty much the most negative thing I can say about this, it's just not as packed with hooks as the albums leading up to it. This combines a slightly more primal production with some chord patterns that feel a little rinsed and repeated, not only in the canon of Borgne themselves but black metal as a whole. Renaître de ses fanges is still an effective mood-inducer, you can almost feel like you can close your eyes to this and see the spectral cover figures drifting through an apocalyptic industrial bombed out urban landscape, and there are a few riff patterns in the depths of some of the tunes that are pretty glorious once they're rolled out. The balance of the ambiance to the aggression is also quite nice, I just think the metal progressions don't stand out to me nearly as well as some off Temps morts or Y. Still a pretty dependable effort, from a band I've kept in rotation since at least 2010's Entraves de l'âme, and one that's built itself an enduring legacy nearly as comprehensive as some of their French peers.

Verdict: Win [7.75/10]

https://borgne.bandcamp.com/

Borgne - Temps Morts (2021)

Industrial black metal acts of note are few and far between, and even when you do encounter them, they're not often the most clever hybrids between the two styles, usually focusing on some superficial elements of one of those constituent genres and then leaning into the other. Enter the creepy Swiss Borgne, a project of the ever prolific Bornyhake and keys player Lady Kaos; and while I cannot tell you that they are approaching this combination with the utmost nuance or uniqueness, their albums have become increasingly more entertaining experiences, peaking with ineffable Y, an album with which his latest, Temps Morts, pairs up quite well. A similar mix of aggressive programmed drumming, eerie tremolo picked notes, grisly vocals and eerie synthesizer atmospheres which is highly satisfying if you're the sort to close your eyes and imagine dystopian wreckage.

I'd actually say that this album is slightly more accessible than its predecessor, in that a lot of the guitar and synth lines seem more immediate to hook onto you, but don't mistake that for some sort of sellout, because this is still frightening and hostile. The beats here range from large, clanking splashes of dilapidated machinery to double bass or blast patterns that seem almost as if the guy is trolling us, only then to lay on the mesmerism through the immortally spooky guitar patterns in pieces like "Near the Bottomless Precipice I Stand" and "The Swords of the Headless Angels" (one of my favorite track titles this year). The atmosphere conjured up across this album is nothing short of revelatory, and while there does exist a fair degree of repetition, the music is so effective that it becomes a strength and not at all a weakness. Whether he's firing on pure industrial drum segues or even the more bouncy groove of "To Cut the Flesh and Feel Nothing but Stillness", there's an urgency and violence to this music that demands your respect, and I'm not sure there are many others out there doing it at this level...certainly this album hit me a lot harder than anything the comparable Aborym has done in many years.

To top that off, Temps Morts is enormous...73 minutes across nine tracks, and extremely consistent in the desolate mood it creates, which I have to say is a perfect fit to the bleak cover art of its industrial looking cathedral and nightmarish landscape. There are a few pauses in the aggression, like the softer piece "I Drown My Eyes Into the Broken Mirror" which relies more on piano lines, smaller scintillating synths and spectral whispered vocals rather than outright harsh rasps, but even there the album retains that sense of a consistently unsettling mood, and it's just another of the many surprises that will hook you throughout the album's considerable depths. Like those long cinematic experiences you patiently sit through because you realize you're getting more bang and quality for your bucks, Temps Morts is a pleasure to experience and then to revisit, even to read through lyrically, and though there's a lot of worthwhile material throughout their 20+ year back catalog, this is yet another of the most impressive albums the project has produced.

Verdict: Win [8.75/10]

https://www.borgne-blackmetal.com/

Borgne - Y (2020)

There aren't many metal musicians quite so prolific as Bornyhake, and what's more, despite being active in, or the full creative force behind about a dozen plus acts at a time, many of them are held to a reasonable level of nuance and quality. Borgne has always been one of his main projects, and in my estimation the most interesting of them, almost mirroring his countrymen Darkspace in the older albums that were given minimalist Roman numeral titles and songs that were enumerated rather than given titles, a choice that often challenges the listener to really dive deep into the audio aesthetics since no obvious picture will be painted for him/her beyond a basic cover artwork and cursory genre knowledge. Bornyhake dropped that tactic around his fourth full-length, but not the poignancy of his songwriting, since a lot of albums since that point in 2009 have gotten even better, with standouts including 2010's Entraves de l'âme, its successor, 2012's Royaume des ombres, and, well, this one right here, Y, his ninth album.

The style Borgne plays is dominantly industrial black metal, comparable to Darkspace or certain phases Blut Aus Nord; but not always quite as distant and bleak as the former, or as dissonant and bizarre as the latter. Y is a sensuous flood of programmed electronic drums, consistent patterns of tremolo picked notes, evil chords, and one of the best Swiss rasps we've ever heard. It certainly leans more on the side of pure black metal, with the exception that the backbeat isn't organic, and there are a lot of synthesizers provided for constant atmosphere by the group's second member Lady Kaos. On the whole, it's really quite simple, there are very few spaces on the album that aren't filled with just a thundering assault of rhythm, but then he'll splice in some breakdown parts which have more of a chugging industrial guitar, and drums patterns that seem more acclimated to that genre. Such a shift might seem cheesy or superficial if it weren't so damn serious, it's almost like a more muscular version of countrymen Samael's brilliant Passage album, but doesn't create its own language of sound quite as well as that, instead drawing from the two halves of its influences and merging them together in a memorable distribution and execution. Some tracks feature atmospheric segues before the surging, pounding aggression returns, but on either side of the contrast the album functions well.

I just love the simmering synthesizer lines that burn like some illegal rave held on a dock between giant steel shipping containers. There is certainly a broad, claustrophobic, urban deterioration here channeled through suicidal and drug-addled emotions. There's not a lot of subtlety despite all that's going on, from the occasional, melancholic melodic guitars that spire off into the nightscape in the bridge of "A Hypnotizing Perpetual Movement That Buries Me in Silence" or awesome wails that haunt "Qui serais-je si je ne le tentais pas?" The vocal arrangements are excellent, and he covers all manner of voices between wails, chants, whispers, snarls and growls of various levels that are probably one of the most intricately designed parts of the album. Even where the album goes more for a pure industrial motif as in the 9+ minute instrumental "Paraclesium", full of little electronic impulses, bleeps and bloops, the oppressive nature of the whole record does not permit your escape. And then he pulls off this climactic, 17 minute track "A Voice in the Land of Stars" which never once bores me throughout its surprising levels of climactic majesty delivered through walls of doomy riffing, shrill synthesizers and tinny percussion. Devastatingly effective album, if you've love entrepreneurs of this style like Red Harvest or Dodheimsgard, or the other Swiss bands I mentioned earlier, and somehow haven't heard Borgne, well you've just been given notice.

Verdict: Epic Win [9/10]

https://www.borgne-blackmetal.com/

Borgne - Entraves de l'Âme (2010)

Entraves de l'Âme is the fourth proper full-length from the Swiss artist Borgne, otherwise known as Bornyhake, and the first of his releases to drop the Roman numeration. If you've experienced his albums before, you'll already know that this project serves as more of an ambient, cosmic alternative to his more direct, bludgeoning Enoid, and though there are some places in which the two intersect, they are thematically separate. They're also both quite gripping, and if you're a fan of artists who brandish the more modern armor of atmosphere, obscurity and disgust, like Leviathan or Xasthur, then I feel it's only natural you would want to explore a number of his works.

As I've already hinted, Borgne's material carries both the scent of human carrion and a knack for expansive expression that swelters to fill almost any space, whether that be the stellar void, a valley in the Alps, or a fogged, cold woodland. Through the thick, resonant guitars, the enormous, lecherous rasp of progenitor Bornyhake, or the intentionally underpinned programming of the brutal drums, you are given a foundation upon which the eerie, simplistic synthesizers can truly soar, and length pieces like the 9-minute "Die Trying to Take Off the Rope" or gentle, measured escalation of "The Plague" are a true pleasure to behold, if you've got the time to kill. One of Bornyhake's greatest weapons is his production: virile and raw, yet intangibly glorious to the point that the listener can experience bliss among the bombardment, revelation among the ripping discourse.

He's also not above throwing out a lead guitar (in "The Plague") or a dire, ambient sequence (i.e. the book-ends "Drown in Nothingness" or "Moorwanderung"). There is a completeness to this work which should satisfy fans of the entire Burzum school of thought. The music is never complex or challenging, but it is constantly engaging the listener to a separate, ghostly plain of sadness and might. The balance is not necessarily perfect, but there's enough going on to sate both the desperate appetite of the depressive addict and the dark explorations of the psychedelic black metal astronaut, and Entraves de l'Âme is successful in carrying you off to another world, where only your emotional survival skills will determine the duration of your exposure.

Verdict: Win [8/10]

http://www.myspace.com/borgne