Back in the days when I was writing for In Your Eyes I had come across an album called Between My Dead, thanks to which I had discovered a young and hyperactive French musician, Aimeric Lerat aka Hangsvart. That work was indicative of a certain talent as well as authentic feeling in his offering an harsh form of funeral doom, imperfect but imbued with great spontaneity. As Hangsvart himself has never hidden, the artistic outlet (not only in a musical sense but also in a literary one) is a sort of therapeutic reaction to the schizophrenia that has afflicted him since his adolescence and this, probably, was also the cause of the dispersiveness in the work of the transalpine boy, who with his main project Abysmal Growls of Despair went so far as to compose albums entirely based on vocal experimentation with outcomes that are difficult to define. Instead, with this latest full length Inner Earth, (his 25th, starting in 2013) Hangsvart offers a relatively canonical instrumental funeral doom, albeit minimal in both recording and composition. What is important is that the album evokes those same feelings felt at the time of listening to Between My Dead: here there is a melodic idea, that unravels among reverberating sounds, for a reasonable duration that allows one to appreciate a work in which many will pay more attention to imperfections while, trying to identify as much as possible with Aimeric’s world, it is possible to grasp a communicative urgency that should not leave one indifferent. For those who would like to delve into the literary side produced by Lerat, there is free access to his collection of poems (in e-book format) emblematically titled Finir de Mourir.
“There are pains, too deep to be seen by others, that define life beyond the shadows.“
2022 – Independent
Mournful Sounds 
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