French post-rockers Aluk Todolo assembled an unpredictable parade of industrial and post-rock events on Descension (Public Guilt, 2007), containing four lengthy instrumental suites. Obedience opens with distorted cavernous drones and slow pounding metallic beats like a warped, slow-motion version of Neu's "motorik" locomotives. Suddenly female voices start screaming and instruments start banging and vibrating at an extremely loud volume, a violent collective fit of vintage Japanese noisecore. Terrifying layers of distortion pile up on top of a primordial drumbeat. The piece sigues into Burial Ground, a calmer, hypnotic Pink Floyd-ian concentrate of psychedelic suspense. Dissonant vibratoes of a stringed instrument interfere with the lulling guitar patterns and eventually decay into Echoes-like pings. The drones return like a glacial wind to blanket Woodchurch, slowly morphing over an anemic industrial pulsation. An infernal guitar distortion emerges from that swampy jam and propels Disease into a more aggressive rhythmic pattern, an android-like cavalcade reminiscent of Chrome's sci-fi fantasies. The first and the fourth pieces are breathtaking. Too bad that the two in the middle do not sustain the intensity. The piece of the EP Ordre (Ajna) was recorded during the same sessions. The drummer and the bassist also played in Diamatregon. They also formed the Gunslingers with guitarist and vocalist Greg Raimo. The Gunslingers unleashed a mayhem of rhythm and noise on No More Invention (2008) and Manifesto Zero (World In Sound, 2010), somewhere between the most frenzied no-wave and the most cerebral prog-rock. Gregory Raimo's solo project GR & Full-Blown Expansion debuted with GR & Full-Blown Expansion (World Sound, 2010), an equally challenging slab of noise-rock, notably the 12-minute Descent Along The An-Ti-Fohn-Nul. Aluk Todolo then released Finsternis (Utech Records, 2009). Premier Contact adopts a more fragile and ominous stance. It segues into the equally anemic Deuxieme Contact, that increases the dose of suspense via languid guitar glissando, but still very little happens. After the relatively brief Totalit‚, which is a bubbling tumor of musique concrete, TroisiŠme Contact increases both the speed and the noise, but then languishes in faceless depression being carved by a steady beat. Quatrieme Contact continues in the frosty and sterile plodding, although it mutates into something more humane and atmospheric. Too little too late. Diamatregon played old-fashioned (i.e. hysterical) black-metal on The Satanic Devotion (2000) and Blasphemy For Satan (DMG, 2002), and returned with Crossroad (2008 - tUMULt, 2010). Aluk Todolo returned to the studio during May - June 2015 to record their 4th album entitled VOIX (voice(s) in French).