Year of No Light is the Bordeaux band that changed shape halfway through its story. It started out with a singer, made its first album with one, and then, in 2008, let the voice go and rebuilt itself as a wordless band with two drummers and three guitars.

The short version

Year of No Light was formed in Bordeaux in September 2001 by the brothers Johan and Bertrand Sébenne, Jérôme Alban and Christophe Mora, at first as a wordless side project. Pierre Anouilh replaced Mora on guitar about a year later, and in September 2003 Julien Perez joined on vocals and keyboards. With Perez the band recorded its debut album, “Nord” (2006). In 2008 it dropped the singer and became a wordless six-piece, and the three albums since then, “Ausserwelt” (2010), “Tocsin” (2013) and “Consolamentum” (2021), have no vocals. The band is filed under post-metal, post-rock and sludge metal, with black metal, doom, drone and dark ambient colours from “Ausserwelt” onward. Alongside the albums it has written and performed live scores for films, starting with Carl Theodor Dreyer’s “Vampyr”.

The years with a singer

The first recordings came with a voice. A demo recorded in June 2004 brought the band its first press, and Rock Sound’s Mike Kemp summed up the early sound as “The Cure playing sludge”. “Nord” was recorded in September 2005 in Switzerland, at Rec. Studio, with Serge Morattel engineering and mixing; the band produced it, and Alan Douches mastered it. It came out in 2006 on CD through Radar Swarm and on double LP through E-Vinyl and Atropine, and the American label Crucial Blast issued it in 2007. The line-up on the record is Perez on vocals and keyboards, Alban and Anouilh on guitars, Johan Sébenne on bass and Bertrand Sébenne on drums. AllMusic’s Ned Raggett gave it four and a half stars out of five and praised both its epic atmosphere and Perez’s singing, while Blabbermouth’s Keith Bergman was more reserved, finding the influences too easy to hear. In 2006 the band toured more, in 2007 it played the Dour Festival, and in 2008 Roadburn and Hellfest; the Roadburn set was released in 2009 as “Live at Roadburn 2008”.

Two drummers, three guitars and no voice

In 2008, after several collaborations and split releases, Year of No Light parted with its singer. At the end of that summer it became a six-piece: Shiran Kaïdine of Monarch! joined as third guitarist and Mathieu Mégemont of Aérôflôt as second drummer, with vintage synthesizers in support. Since then the band has been wordless. “Ausserwelt”, recorded in Bordeaux with Cyrille Gachet from September 2009, came out in 2010 on CD through Conspiracy and on double LP through Music Fear Satan, and it is the album where the black metal, doom and drone elements come to the front. In 2011 the band played two sets at Roadburn, one performing “Ausserwelt” in full.

The other set was a film score. Year of No Light first played its soundtrack to Dreyer’s “Vampyr” live on 28 May 2010 at the Barbey theatre in Bordeaux, then in Tallinn in February 2011, and a studio version followed in 2013. The band has since scored other works for live performance, including “Les Maîtres Fous”, played at the Musée du quai Branly in Paris on 6 January 2012. “Tocsin” followed in 2013 on Debemur Morti. In late 2014 the band made its first tour of the United States, eleven dates ending with two nights at Saint Vitus in New York.

“Consolamentum”, released by Pelagic Records on 2 July 2021, was the first full-length album in eight years. It takes its title from the initiation rite of the Cathar church of medieval southern Europe, and the band described its theme as the fall of man and salvation through darkness. It was recorded live and mixed by Cyrille Gachet at Cryogene, near Bordeaux, and mastered again by Alan Douches. Invisible Oranges heard in it a concept-driven, cinematic record built on layered guitars, two drum kits and synthesizers.

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Album by album

Four studio albums, from 2006 to 2021, each with its own guide on this site: the first with a singer, the other three wordless. The film scores, the live album and the split releases sit outside the grid. Tap any title for its guide.

The players

The core of the band has not changed since the early days: Jérôme Alban on guitar, Bertrand Sébenne on drums, percussion and keyboards, and Johan Sébenne on bass, keyboards and electronics, all there since 2001, with Pierre Anouilh on guitar since 2002. Christophe Mora played guitar in the first year. Julien Perez sang and played keyboards from 2003 to 2008, and he is the only singer the band has recorded an album with. In 2008 Shiran Kaïdine joined on guitar and Mathieu Mégemont on drums, keyboards and synthesizer, giving the band its two-drummer format. On the 2014 American tour the band played as a five-piece, because Anouilh could not travel for visa reasons.

Where to start

If you want to hear the band with a voice, start with “Nord” (2006), the debut that AllMusic’s Ned Raggett rated four and a half stars out of five. For the wordless band, “Ausserwelt” (2010) is the first album after the singer left and the one the band played in full at Roadburn in 2011. Then go to “Consolamentum” (2021), the Cathar-themed album that ended an eight-year wait between full-lengths.

Why they matter

Year of No Light is one of the bands that carried post-metal into France, and it shows how fluid the genre can be: it moved from sung records to wordless ones and has stayed there. The two-drummer line-up and the work with silent films give it a place of its own next to the other European bands on my Experimental & Post-Metal page, such as Cult of Luna in Sweden and Amenra in Belgium. The British magazine Metal Hammer has included it in a top ten of French metal bands.

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