Album Review
UNTITLED WITH DRUMS - Made Flesh
Controlled heaviness, strong melodies, and solid songwriting.
Although we at PitStop enjoy reviewing albums primarily within the realm of extreme metal, if you are one of our regular readers, you have probably noticed that we also like crossing those boundaries. This time, we turn our attention to a record operating somewhere between alternative rock and post-hardcore with UNTITLED WITH DRUMS' latest offering. Hailing from Clermont-Ferrand, the band builds the weight of “Made Flesh” not through sheer density, but through an arrangement logic that knows exactly when to open up and when to pull back. Lucas Delay's guitars often avoid occupying the center of the mix, instead forming a mass around Martin Le Borgne's vocals and bass, while Rémy D. Perrin's drums are left open enough to create a tangible sense of space rather than compressing the entire structure. The result is an album that draws on the fundamental language of late-'90s and early-2000s alternative rock and post-hardcore, while reshaping it through a contemporary production approach.
The opening track, 'Above My Head', functions almost as a small manifesto for this approach. It begins with a big, memorable guitar riff before quickly dropping into a darker, more restrained verse. Here, Le Borgne does not need to shout over the guitars; instead, he fills the space they leave behind with melodic weight. The lead guitar's upper-register tones entering during the chorus then lift the song's dynamics once again. What UNTITLED WITH DRUMS are doing here goes slightly beyond a simple loud/quiet contrast: they control intensity not only through the amount of distortion, but also through the width of the spaces left within the arrangement.
This approach takes on a more direct and heavier form with 'Shame'. Built around echoing clean guitars, the track is layered with Le Borgne's sharper vocal performance and gradually takes on a self-punishing weight as it moves toward the chorus. Its strength lies in the fact that it does not unnecessarily prolong the eruption so common to post-hardcore. The riffs grow denser, the vocals take on a more visceral character, and then the arrangement returns to its melodic center. For that reason, 'Shame' is not simply one of the album's heavier tracks; it is also one of the points where the band most effectively balances melodic accessibility and sheer heaviness.
'Matter' reveals another side of the album. Broader, atmospheric and progressive textures come to the foreground, while the guitars function less as carriers of riffs and more as architects of the song's harmonic space. The use of synths becomes important here as well. Rather than creating a second wall that competes with the guitars, Nicolas Zalachas's keyboards fill the spaces left when the guitars pull back. Particularly after the transition to a four-piece lineup, this choice turns what could have been a thinning of the band's sound into a more controlled form of layering. The album's experimental side does not emerge here as some conspicuous genre rupture, but as a way of using space within the existing logic of the arrangements.
'Gray' continues this atmospheric direction with more ambiguous textures and mysterious sounds, but once the distortion returns, the track's true center of gravity becomes apparent again. This is precisely where one of UNTITLED WITH DRUMS' defining characteristics emerges: they never completely abandon the guitars in order to create atmosphere, nor do they sacrifice atmosphere to reach the heavier sections. The two extremes feed into one another.
At 4:57, 'Space' is the album's longest track and its most patient expression of this approach. Its minimalist, bright passages are allowed to maintain their own space for an extended period, while the arrival of distortion does more than simply increase the volume; it also shifts the song's rhythmic and melodic weight. Le Borgne's stronger vocal delivery in the choruses carries this transition directly through the dynamics of the human voice. The delay at the heart of the song expands its dramatic structure by slowing down the classic post-hardcore build. Yet 'Space' never loosens its songwriting in the name of atmosphere.
'Change for You' takes its time deliberately in the intro, before settling into a more regular groove once the song gets underway. Then comes 'Oblivious', the point where the album genuinely breaks its formula. Fuzz-heavy guitars and a forward-leaning rhythm pull the song into a dirtier strain of alternative rock, but the real distinction emerges when the tempo drops. Where this kind of arrangement would normally build toward a faster, harder-hitting chorus, UNTITLED WITH DRUMS do the opposite, turning the slowdown itself into the chorus's point of impact. It is one of the album's smallest yet most meaningful compositional deviations. The band is not simply reproducing the aesthetics of the '90s and 2000s here; they are playing with the expectations embedded within that aesthetic.
'Parasitic' turns back toward harsher, more unsettling tones, while 'Been So High', with its almost acoustic-feeling verses and sections that build in intensity afterward, comes closest to the legacy of grunge. Yet the reference never becomes a straightforward exercise in nostalgia. UNTITLED WITH DRUMS combine the guitar tones and song architecture of that era with a contemporary mixing approach. Cyrille Gachet's production and mixing are crucial here: the natural body of the drums is preserved, while the guitars are never turned into an overwhelming continuous wall. Alan Douches' mastering likewise expands the album's volume in a controlled manner rather than flattening its dynamic structure.
The total runtime of “Made Flesh” — 38:44, with no track exceeding five minutes — is also part of this compositional philosophy. Although all ten songs draw from the same fundamental genre vocabulary, they do not sound like variations on a single template. The key is not that the band tries to invent a new genre for every track, but that it changes the proportions between guitar density, vocal weight, tempo and atmosphere. Unlike the constant-intensity strategy so common in modern heavy music, heaviness here gains its meaning precisely because it arrives after restraint.
In this respect, “Made Flesh” marks a clear departure from the more scattered and progressive tendencies of UNTITLED WITH DRUMS' earlier period. The lineup change following “Hollow” could have been expected to weaken the four-piece structure, yet the band's new configuration seems to have done the opposite by stripping away unnecessary layers. Lucas Delay's guitars pull back when necessary rather than filling every available space, Le Borgne's bass and vocals carry the center of the songs, and Perrin's drums provide weight without compressing that center. Etienne Marchal's additional guitar contributions likewise never turn into a second guitar wall that disrupts this central balance.
The album's visual side also forms a coherent whole with its controlled darkness, with the cover artwork created by Martin Le Borgne. Rather than covering the band's alternative rock and post-hardcore roots with the more clichéd symbols of metal aesthetics, the visual identity supports the material's comparatively restrained and introspective character. This choice matters because “Made Flesh” never tries to present itself as more extreme than it actually is. Its weight comes not from amplifying the genre label, but from tightening the arrangements.
For that reason, approaching “Made Flesh” solely through references to Failure, Quicksand, Deftones or Cave In would miss the album's real strength. Yes, its musical language is firmly rooted in the alternative rock and post-hardcore legacy of that era; however, UNTITLED WITH DRUMS' strength lies in refusing to present that legacy as a period aesthetic preserved behind glass. Tracks such as 'Oblivious' demonstrate that the band possesses the compositional instincts to step outside this formula, while 'Space' and 'Matter' show that atmospheric layers can function structurally rather than decoratively.
“Made Flesh” is not an album that demands ever-increasing heaviness from the listener. Instead, it asks you to follow when the distortion pulls back, when the riff falls silent, and when the vocals are brought to the center. This restraint is what defines UNTITLED WITH DRUMS' position within the contemporary French heavy music scene: rather than making heaviness bigger, the band uses exactly the right amount of weight for each song to carry. The door to what comes next opens precisely when that controlled framework is broken — particularly in the rhythmic curveballs of 'Oblivious'.
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