DERNIERE VOLONTÉ - Cendre

After a long fallow period, during which Geoffroy Delacroix's project seemed intent on cutting ties for good with its darker, more martial early approach, Dernière Volonté has made a U-turn: nothing too drastic (since little remains of either the deep industrial-ambient influences or the so-called military pop), but the desire to win back the old audience is there. And that's no small thing.

If his previous effort, "Cristal" (2022), already showed more than one sign of recovery, this "Cendre" doubles down on recapturing a certain bygone melancholy, highlighting a sound that's as original and distinctive as ever, where the French language traces decadent melodies over minimal-synth beds and neofolk legacies.
In this respect, it's the first half of the album that proves most convincing: tracks like "Harmonies Du Soir", the evocative "Vanités" and the excellent "Maudits" (not too far removed from the old warhorse "Toujours") make for the best possible start, while the measured "Mandoline" and the spleen of the somber "Ombres" confirm a renewed inspiration in the French musician. That inspiration, however, inexorably fades in the second half of the record, where only the decent "Contre Jour" and "Les Jardins De Tannhäuser" (the latter tinged with neoclassical darkwave influences) really work.

What's truly missing, though, is the surrounding context - a single, thriving scene that simply no longer exists today (think back to the excellent early releases on Hau Ruck!, as well as the frequent collaborations between Geoffroy and Albin Julius of Der Blutharsch). That absence turns this "Cendre" into a monument to endurance that adds little to the beauty of a past now twenty years distant (the essential "Devant Le Miroir" came out exactly in 2006). The proud French drummer keeps marching on in perfect solitude, but from that once-golden sky, today only ashes fall.

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18/10/2026