Bandcamp Seven minutes is a lot of room for a band with no singer, and “Fragile” uses all of it. It opens on reverb and almost nothing else, builds a monumental wall out of layered leads and a piano that stays half-buried, then lets the whole thing decay into a melancholy outro instead of slamming a final chord. The peak hits hard because there is real headroom underneath it rather than a master already pressed flat. If the other four pieces on this mini-album worked the way the title track does, this would be an easy recommendation.
They do not, and the reason is worth naming rather than glossing over. These five tracks do not sound like they came from one session, and the differences are not stylistic, they are technical. “Rituel” is warm and analogue with a snare that has genuine room decay and a kick that punches on body rather than click, the best-sounding thing here after the closer. “L’odeur de l’orage” is dark and grainy with an untriggered, living kit and a build from filigree picking through slow riffing into a blast climax. Then “Lune rouge” arrives and the floor drops out: bone-dry, surgically edited, a kit that sits so far into sample territory that the track loses depth entirely, and a master squeezed hard enough that the loud part never really falls away. The note separation is immaculate. There is also almost nothing behind it. A record that spends its other four tracks earning atmosphere gives that atmosphere away completely on track three.
What survives the inconsistency is the writing. This is a trio that understands the instrumental problem, which is that without a voice something else has to carry the line, and they solve it differently each time. On the opener it is a flute, orchestral brass synths and harmonised leads trading the melody around. On “Rituel” it is pure repetition, a trance built out of two or three motifs that gradually thicken until the thing has weight. On the closer it is layered guitar lines with piano and synth pads underneath. Russian Circles and God Is An Astronaut are the obvious reference points and the band do not hide from either, but the flute on “Eaux troubles” is not something you get from that lineage, and it is the most interesting thirty seconds on the record.
Where it costs them is density. Guitars pile into the lower middle when everything is running, the bass rarely steps out with a line of its own, and in the fast closing section of “L’odeur de l’orage” the separation goes cloudy exactly where the track wants to feel widest. That is a common instrumental-metal tax and this record pays a normal amount of it.
Five tracks, twenty-eight minutes, self-released, no label behind it. What Avalanches have is a closer that stands with anything in this lane and a band that can write an instrumental build without leaning on a formula. What they do not yet have is a record that sounds like one record. When they get the whole thing to sit the way “Fragile” and “Rituel” sit, that will be the one to write home about.
The interesting thing here is how unevenly the five tracks are recorded. Two of them, “Rituel” and the title track, are warm and open with real headroom, drums with audible room around them, and a kick that works on weight instead of attack. “L’odeur de l’orage” is in the same family, dark and grainy with a kit that sounds played rather than assembled. “Lune rouge” is the opposite in every respect: extremely tight, extremely clean, drums deep into sample territory, and a master compressed hard enough that the dynamic range mostly disappears. The frequency separation on that track is flawless and the spatial depth is gone. The opener sits in between, transparent and modern with a slightly digital reverb and a synthetic-sounding kit, though it carries the most unusual arrangement on the record with flute and brass synths trading the lead. Across everything, the bass functions as foundation rather than as a voice, and the lower middle fills in when the full band is running, which costs the biggest moments some clarity.
Standout tracks: Fragile, Rituel, L’odeur de l’orage
