Dissonant black metal act Acédia of Quebec City released the new single “Le pacte muet” on October 2. It is the first single from their monolithic album Égarement, which comes out on November 20.
For the first single, the band looked for a song that could showcase the future album’s essence. “Le pacte muet”, with its slower and faster parts and blast beats, appeared to be exactly it.
“Thematically, the album deals with emptiness and the slow erosion of the self in an overstimulating, routine-driven world. Most songs look at the city and the people on its margins. “Le pacte muet” is more introspective. It is about the roles we learn to adopt and play, sometimes by accident, to get through daily life, and about not always knowing who we really are underneath,” the musicians tell Musiknights.
The band’s guitarist and vocalist Pascal Landry wrote both music and lyrics for the song and for the rest of the album. Drummer Charléli Arsenault wrote all his own parts. Later, the band as a whole developed everything, adding adjustments and improvements at nearly every practice while learning the material.
The lyrics are always the last part to come, and such was the case with “Le pacte muet”.
“The title […] refers to an unspoken social agreement to live through preconceived notions of ourselves and others. Nobody ever stated it aloud, yet we keep it up every day. We rely on our routines and surroundings to recognize ourselves and others. The pact is silent because nobody signs it and, often, nobody questions it. The lyrics on this album deliberately avoid metaphysical or philosophical matters, which we explored on our previous album. This time, they focus on everyday life and its impact on consciousness,” they add.
The album will come out digitally via Bandcamp and on cassette via Les Productions Hérétiques.
Acédia are a progressive/dissonant black metal band founded in Quebec City in 2011 by Pascal Landry, Marc-André Bérubé and Julien LeBreux. After Julien moved away about a decade ago, Charléli Arsenault (Cadavre) eventually replaced him. Christian Proteau played bass while Julien was still in the band, and Glauque (Eos, Délétère) joined the collective on bass during the live cycle of their third album, Fracture (2022). Since then, the band dropped to a single guitar, and Marc-André switched from guitar to bass, which settled their trio formula.
Acédia online:
https://www.facebook.com/Acediaqc
https://www.instagram.com/acedia.qc/
Cover photo — Bandcamp