ALBUM REVIEW
CLØUDY SKIES – Bury Me Beneath the Stars
Fragile melodies balance atmosphere against bursts of heaviness.
French duo CLØUDY SKIES expand the musical world established on their 2023 debut album "Changes" across a broader canvas on their second full-length, "Bury Me Beneath the Stars". The hazy guitar tones of shoegaze, the long-breathed melodic passages of post-rock and the weight of post-metal converge within compositions that occasionally edge towards blackgaze through their harsher vocals. The prominence of clean guitar tones is a defining factor in this combination. Melodies that linger in the air lend the music a fragile character, while the arrival of distortion and harsh vocals replaces this tranquillity with an unsettling intensity. Yet the impact of these transitions stems not necessarily from the level of heaviness they achieve, but from how effectively these two contrasting approaches fit together.
Opening track 'Fluffy Darkness' conveys this contrast in rhythmic terms as well. While the melodic lines of the clean guitars remain intact, the activity in the rhythm section prevents the song from settling into a tranquil shoegaze composition. The vocals shift between clean and harsh delivery, suggesting a persistent tension beneath the beauty on the surface. CLØUDY SKIES do not use their melodic passages merely to set the stage for heavier sections; they make them compositional elements that carry weight in their own right. Even so, there are moments when the songwriting becomes less convincing as it moves away from the atmosphere created by the guitars towards a more direct form of aggression.
At over ten minutes, 'Depth Spell' is the most extended example of this approach. The track unfolds through gradual shifts in its melodic layers, allowing the textures created by the guitars and rhythm section to expand rather than relying on a constant increase in heaviness. Conny Pettersson's drumming helps the lengthy composition move between different levels of intensity. However, the prolonged repetition of similar melodic ideas weakens the sense of development in certain passages. The line between sustaining an atmosphere and stretching an idea beyond its limits becomes blurred at times. The track's patient progression is not without purpose, but tighter editing could have made its heavier sections more impactful.
One of the album's more striking moments, 'Lights of the Night', takes on a different character with the contribution of Rotten Sound vocalist Keijo Niimimaa. His raw, cutting vocals stand in sharp contrast to the guitars' lingering melodies. The added aggression broadens the song's boundaries without erasing CLØUDY SKIES' atmospheric approach. Nature Morte vocalist Chris Richard serves a similar purpose on the title track. Here, the relationship between the delicate melodies of the clean guitars and the harsher vocals shapes the song's emotional intensity. The two guest vocalists do more than provide contrasting vocal textures; they offer two distinct examples of how heaviness can be incorporated into the duo's sound.
Even so, the album's greatest strength lies in the melodic character of its guitars rather than its extreme metal passages. The use of reverb allows notes to bleed into one another, creating a vast atmosphere, but the same approach can diminish the guitars' physical impact in heavier sections. This becomes particularly apparent when elements of black metal that call for a sharper, more direct expression come into play, creating a mismatch between the dense effects and the music's aggression. Comparisons with bands such as Cult of Luna and Deafheaven make sense when the heavier passages merge seamlessly with the atmosphere, but some sections drawing on more traditional black metal elements fail to achieve the same natural cohesion. CLØUDY SKIES' musical identity is therefore defined less by how closely they approach the genre's standards of heaviness than by how consistently they bring their melodic and extreme elements together.
'Living Inside a Dream' departs from the album's metal-heavy compositions through its synth layers and sampled pedal steel guitar sounds. This choice moves away from the familiar guitar-centred structure and opens up a different sonic space. 'Birdsong' serves a similar purpose as a quieter track that brings electronic elements to the fore. Both compositions heighten the contrast between the album's heavier passages, although it remains debatable whether a record already built around extended atmospheric sections needs such expansive stretches of tranquillity. The placement of 'Living Inside a Dream' introduces a distinct break in the album's flow, while 'Birdsong' revisits a similar approach. These tracks demonstrate that the duo's musical thinking extends beyond heavy guitars, but their contribution to the album's overall coherence depends on how effectively the intensity established by the other compositions is sustained.
Formed around Paris in 2019, CLØUDY SKIES consists of Lionel Forest and Nicolas Simon, and on "Bury Me Beneath the Stars", the duo places the transitions between atmospheric post-metal and blackgaze at the centre of its aesthetic. Forest's production brings the details of the clean guitars and atmospheric layers to the fore, but does not always give the heavier passages the same degree of sharpness. This reveals both the album's strengths and its limitations: when the duo combines fragile melodies with harsh vocals, it finds a distinctive means of expression, but that cohesion occasionally loosens when it turns towards more traditional extreme metal elements. Rather than eliminating the distance between genres, "Bury Me Beneath the Stars" derives its value from the musical tension built across that divide. Tighter arrangements and a more pronounced impact in the heavier sections could take CLØUDY SKIES' approach to a far more convincing level.
