Upon the release of Plethora in 2016 — their first full-length and second release altogether — Lyonese band Michel Anoia claimed it would “leave serious marks all over your body, including some brain damage, with their unforgiving brutal power and all-around freaky nature.” Five short years later they released their second and final full-length Nervures. Today we’re going to listen to both. Might want to buckle up for this one.

Michel Anoia – Plethora (12 February 2016)

Michel Anoia – Nervures (17 September 2021)

Both albums are around half an hour long, filled with noodly guitars randomly bouncing all over the place, constant out-of-control and abrupt timing shifts, lots of noise and feedback, and vocals that are mostly harsh and deep death metal growls. Basically, a mixture of all the best parts of mathcore and deathgrind.

The earlier one is somewhat more hardcore/post-hardcore oriented; heavy and distorted but occasionally using clean guitar tones — with the obvious exception of the track “Rage Noire” which is a wall-to-wall freakout of psychotic, psychedelic noise. The album also prominently features echoey, PING!-y grindcore drums.

In contrast, last year’s release kind of leans more in a straight-up death metal direction, in tone and in overall riffage. Of course, there are still more than enough mathy and grindy bits to keep things interesting, just a bit darker and heavier and bleaker this time around.

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Find both releases via Bandcamp — see below (Plethora as a free download or on vinyl; Nervures as a name-your-price download).
 


 
http://anoia.bandcamp.com