AU CHAMP DES MORTS was born in 2014 in France, during a meeting of the minds at an underground festival. In less than a year, they released more than an hour's worth of music. By late 2016 they had their debut album "Dans La Joie" ready. The album was released in January of 2017 and it comes in with seven tracks and a listening time of just over 52 minutes.

The opening track "Nos Décombres" comes in with a keyed intro that quickly turns in to a gothic scream and an ensemble of drums, bass, and guitars. The vocals are the epitome of Black Metal with a tortured scream and intelligible lyrics. The music has a great low-key melody to it. The track is deep and dark. The bass is severely low and the drums are slow and methodical, until about the four-minute mark where a more blast beat play comes in along with a clearer depiction of the super low guitars. While the drums are for the majority of the track lighter, they still own this one. There is battle between the drum work and the vocals, that almost leave the rest of the instrument representation in the dust.

"Après le Carnage", track two, has much more guitar love and boy does it shine, even just in the first few seconds of the track. The tone is higher, but still keeps a mild cryptic ambiance. The vocals are a creep fest, but in the best ways. There are the dying screams, but there is a distorted cleaner vocal buried in here as well. This helps create an interesting contrast within the first two minutes of this nine and a half minute track. The drums really start to get noticed after the two-minute mark as well. They can do blast beats well, they can do rhythm change nearly flawlessly and they can keep the track glued together while still creating interest. The bass remains utterly low and really gets a chance to shine at about four minutes in when the rhythm changes and it becomes much lower and chuggy verses more fluid and flowy, like the first four minutes.

Track five, the longest and title track, comes in at just a hair over ten minutes. "Dans La Joie" keeps with the comfortable muted cryptic vocals. The drums blast away, but aren't as deep as usual. They do continue to have their strength and really shine in this track. The guitars are really a wonderfully hard listen as well. The drums come in blasting in all their power again around the 5:20 mark, this time with much more depth.

The final track "La Fin Du Monde", show cases the guitars in the opener. While still electric, they are soft and ethereal. The vocals enter and are clean and clear and concise and stunning. The drums are cymbal and highball glory. This is a complete 180 from anything on the rest of the album, but it shows just how musically inclined AU CHAMP DES MORTS is. A simply creative ending to an otherwise hard and dim album.

AU CHAMP DES MORTS' "Dans La Joie" is an interesting piece of work. Most of the album has a cryptic, dark, and heavy feel to it. However, the final track is a breath of fresh air, not that the album needed it per se. It was just an interesting twist to an otherwise aphotic album. This album is a good one to check out and perhaps add to your collection.