THE BEAST

Boasting a 2 and ½ year writing process and mixing/mastering credits by Raphaël Bovey / MyRoom Studio (WILHELMINA, SCHAMMASCH, ZATOKREV), “Lost Empyrean” serves as a soundtrack to the dual relationship between the primordial quintessence colliding with the earthly body and the illusory nature of providence upon the somber, meager trappings of existence.

“Lost Empyrean” features 7 as dynamic and multi-faceted as crushing and furious songs :

1. Wingless Multitudes
2. Hosea 8:7
3. Algid Troy
4. The Burden Of Almost
5. Lost Empyrean
6. A Sea Of Light
7. Sarracenia

As per usual, the French quartet worked with Axël Kriloff's paintings while the layout was handed to Stefan Thanneur.

The album will be released on December 14th worldwide and is available now for pre-order in special edition vinyl, vinyl and cd. The digital download is up at Bandcamp.

Twenty years divide "Infected Brain Machine", DIRGE's first demo, and "Hyperion", their sixth album. First inclined to industrial textures somewhat similar to Godflesh, mixed with a touch of 90's noise (still significant on the inaugural "Down, Last Level", 1998), the band widens its sound palette at the turn of the 21st century. Less mechanical and more organic, heavy and stifling atmospheres follow the lines of corrosive guitars that subsequently become the core of DIRGE's music. Predating a genre that would later be christened as post-hardcore or post-metal, the second album, "Blight and Vision Below a Faded Sun", is released in 2000.

Recorded during the spring of 2003, "And Shall the Sky Descend" follows one year later. If guitars remain the cornerstone of the four long pieces that build it, the extremely decelerated tempos, creeping samples, violin, didgeridoo and female vocals (Von Magnet's Flore) present the result of three years of musical evolution towards more mesmerizing and psychedelic horizons.

In 2007, the band gives birth to "Wings of Lead over Dormant Seas", an immersive double album in which ambient and tribal power stand alongside massive riffs and industrial volutes, haunted by the deep voice of Kill The Thrill's Nicolas Dick on the one hour title track.

In April 2011, DIRGE injects ethereal brightness, lethargic cold and melodic breath within the telluric riffs running through its fifth release, the warmly acclaimed "Elysian Magnetic Fields". For the album, the band embarks on tours from Portugal to Russia, including stops in Germany, UK, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic and Latvia, among others.

2014 is the "Hyperion" year. Released through the first-rate French label Debemur Morti Productions (Blut Aus Nord, Rosetta, Year Of No Light...), it draws the cold and ethereal vein of "Elysian Magnetic Fields" out, between hazy melancholy and movement variations, powerful as well as progressive. The various keys of vocals (Lycia's Tara Vanflower is featured on one track) serve wide-ranging compositions, both profound and bright. With "Hyperion", DIRGE signs its most daring and iconoclast work to date.