Title: Dans l’étreinte de Cauchemar
Release date: September 16th, 2022
Track count: 5
Duration: 24:35
Language: French
Vocals: STN (scream, clean)
Enigmus (whispers, sigh)
Music and lyrics: Enigmus
Production: Enigmus
Graphic design and artwork: Enigmus
Central painting: Tério
1. Ainsi, mon sang
2. Sous le regard de l’aube
3. Lorsque le démon hurle
4. Le cri des orages
5. La marche des silences
Dans l’étreinte de Cauchemar is the debut album of Acte V.
Riffs lean into black metal, with an emphasis on emotions such as melancholy and sadness. Featuring lots of tremolo picking as well as blast beats (even some gravity beats), played with a low tuning and a heavy sound more common found in death metal.
Lyrical themes all sit in the domain of psychology, including depression, anger, self-loathing, and more. Metaphors are used to explore those topics, such as using abstract characters or comparing emotions to natural phenomena. In the title of the album, Cauchemar is one such character, who represents the whole of all the antagonists.
The music of Dans l’étreinte de Cauchemar was written from March through August 2021. The recording of the string instruments ran from September through November of that year. The mixing ran from September 2021 to May 2022.
Vocals: The DAW effects on the vocal tracks are a bit of mono delay and reverb. Those effects are dialed up during the clean part in Sous le regard de l’aube, the whispers in Le cri des orages, and the sigh in La marche des silences.
Guitar: Excluding the clean guitars from Sous le regard de l’aube, there are 8 tracks of guitars throughout. Half of the tracks were played on an ENGL Fireball 25 amp head, and the other half was played on an ENGL Savage 120 Mark II amp head. Within each group, half are panned on one side and half are panned on the other side. All tracks were played into an ENGL E412XXL cabinet.
An Ibanez Tube Screamer IS9 (for just a small kick) as well as an iSP Decimator II Noise Reduction pedals were used in from of preamp for all distortion tracks.
During the middle part of Sous le regard de l’aube, a Fathom Multi-Function Reverb pedal is used in the FX loop for the background tracks. There are two tracks of clean guitar, one played using the bridge pickup, the other played using the neck pickup. For those tracks, a Boss GT-6 multi-effect unit was used in the FX loop for delay and reverb.
All tracks were played on a Solar Guitars ATG 1.6. The pickups, normally Fishmann Fluence Modern, had been swapped with Seymour Duncan Black Winter pickups for purpose of the recording (Enigmus regrets that decision). The tuning is standard A, with a slight modification to strings 1 and 2. Strings are Ernie Ball Slinky Mammoth. There are no DAW effects on any of the guitar tracks.
Guitar tracks were each recorded with 4 microphones at a time, with varying position and composition, pointing the top left speaker of the cabinet. A total of 5 different microphones were used, comprising of two Shure SM-57, one Audix D2, one Audix I5, and one Sennheiser MD-421. Enigmus liked the Audix D2 the most.
Bass: There are two tracks of bass, one played with fingers and one played with a pick. The bass used was a Schecter Guitar Research Stiletto Stealth-4, connected directly in the audio interface. There are no DAW effects on the bass tracks.
Software: EZDrummer2 was used for the drum program, with the Drums of Destruction drum kit. Cubase Pro 11 was used for recording, mixing, and mastering. Cubase‘s HALion Sonic SE plugin was used for the cello tracks in Sous le regard de l’aube and Le cri des orages. Olympus Choir Elements (as a Cubase plugin) was used for the choir tracks in La marche des silences.
