Orakle - Éclats

Orakle are a French quintet, that is quite interesting, as the assimilate a lot of odd meter rhythms into a prog cornucopia with a lot of extreme metal elements. They have existed in different forms since the mid-90s, but have not been terribly prolific in their output, with just 3 demos and 3 proper releases prior to this one. They seem to easily slide between a deeply sophisticated instrumental prog into top down extreme passages that they dilute with some softer cleanly sung ones and they sing in French, which basically, limits their appeal to mostly Francophone territories, like their native France, Canada and a few more, with the possibility to crossover to other markets not completely squandered, but greatly diminished.
 
In the past they have been more extreme, but nowadays they have worked the aggression into a certain structure and managed to channel it, quite interestingly. I had trouble “following” the songs entirely, because of the language barrier, but on the other hand, they almost never felt, boring soundwise, although their entrenched style, makes it hard to have great modulations in terms of intensity and even when those occur, they do follow a certain pattern not being as chaotic as for example in the case of bands like Arcturus. I guess Andromeda, passed my mind, while they might also be likable to people that are Francophones and enjoy the mid period of Opeth, the later more experimental works of Enslaved, Virus and the like...