From The Metal Archives, "Bonjour Tristesse is French for "hello sadness". It comes from a poem written by French poet Paul Éluard (1895 - 1952), and it is also the title of the first novel by French novelist Françoise Sagan (1935 - 2004). The band is a one-man band from Bavaria, and his latest album here has four songs. From their EPK, "The third BONJOUR TRISTESSE album paints an extremely bleak picture of the dystopian reality of our time from an unusual perspective. It can be seen as an angry and passionate critique of the industrialized world we are living in. At the center is the conflict between modern humanity and nature."

"Turmoil" is the first. A wall of sound hits you out of the gate. The riff is somewhat discernable, but it is nearly drowned by the constant picking, and the horrid vocals. The burning pace finally slows a bit, as more depressive elements come shining through. It picks back up with intensity through completion. "Nightbringer" has a slow and torturous beginning that picks up to machine gun drumming and another wall of guitars. Although the songs are lengthy, and the pace changes every now and again, there isn't much variation from song to song.

The title track is a 12-minute opus. Just when you think that they can't pack any more into the songs, this groove of overgrown thickets springs up all around you. There is a nice slow down before the half-way mark, with clean, ambient tones. A chugging bass line picks the song back up to a frenzied pace once again. The depressive tones weight down your very soul. "Ode to Emptiness" is a fitting closer. The pace and sound are agonizing, and the vocals sound like they are coming from someone who is taking their last breaths. Total emptiness is the lack of anything, and everything...feelings, thoughts, consciousness. That is what I get when I listen to this closer.

Overall, this was an intense album that balanced anger with despair quite well. Although the four songs had a similar vibe at times, and the vocals were incensed acts of rage, the album presented the intensity in moments separated in sections, so that the listener was not overwhelmed by them. The production probably needs the most work...it was too high in treble, as the genre often boasts.