Hailing from Los Angeles, United States, Acte V is a studio, mostly solo, project. It was created by Enigmus (a Québécois immigrant) in early 2021. The name “Acte V” was selected around August of that year, after running with different names for a few months. It’s unknown if Acte V will expand to do live performances. At the moment, it is focusing solely on writing music.
Musically, Acte V can be summarized as black metal with a death metal influence. Melodies predominantly fall into the melancholic, emotional, soul searching genres of black metal. Near constant tremolo picking is accompanied by lots of blast beats. The death metal influence is unambiguous thanks to the low tuning (standard A) and heavy guitar sound.
All in French, Acte V’s lyrics touch on psychology. Themes include anger, depression, self-worth, trauma, and so on. These are approached in a very story-like manner, using metaphors and sometimes featuring abstract characters named after human characteristics or emotions. It’s possible that other themes will be covered in the future, but for its first release, Enigmus chose to focus on his personal journey.
Enigmus
The story begins a few decades ago, when Enigmus is born in Montreal in 1975. He acquires his first bass guitar at 15 years old, and quickly puts it through a Boss Distortion pedal. He also starts writing lyrics.
For the next 10 years, Enigmus writes death metal, the kind that is very low and fast. Early Incantation, Suffocation and Cataclysm are his major influences.
During the second half of those 10 years, he is introduced to black metal with Immortal’s Battles in the North and Marduk’s Opus Nocturne. It’s only natural that his music creation expanded to black metal.
After playing with a few bands (Obscene Crisis and Impurity), as well as after having a two-person project (Vengeance), Enigmus’ interests have shifted enough that he abandons music writing. Would he rekindle it later? He didn’t think so. In fact, he pretty much left the metal scene and developed an interest in other musical genres – but never as a musician.
We fast-forward two decades later. Enigmus has reconnected with black metal for a few years, thanks to Youtube and a job sitting in an office. Still not a music-writing capacity though (but he’s kind of thinking about it sometimes).
However, thanks to personal life challenges and the COVID-19 pandemic, Enigmus is struggling with depression and alcoholism. He has to make difficult choices in order to get better.
One of these choices is sobriety, which has important consequences.
He now has a large creative void in his life, as well as a lot of free time. So in late 2020 he gives a try to music writing. He borrows a guitar and a multi-effect from a friend, and music immediately starts pouring out, like a dam that breaks.
Over the course of the next several months he acquires equipment and writes a bunch of songs. Early in 2021 he already has a few songs, and starts planning on recording them.
You know the rest of the story.
STN
It’s in 1986 that STN came to be in eastern France, close to the German and Swiss borders. He spent his early life listening to saturated music coming from his parents’ music center.
Challenging youth, he is gifted with his first guitar at the age of 9. He is studying assiduously by the age of 17; it is during that period that he starts his own punk band: Ill-Fated, with senior high school friends. A demo with few titles came out of it. He continued for a few years with other bands without much merit, and a few recordings were released during that period.
In 2010, he discovered black metal, and with it, a global definition of everything motivating him so far. A revelation. Generally into DSBM, he explored all facets of the genre nonetheless so that he could understand them better. It’s also at that time that he joined French act Je, and stayed for 5 years.
While pursuing his musical explorations, he would continue perfecting his guitar skills, all the while working with bass guitar, drums, keyboards, and singing.
Determined but without a band, he created his solo project: Soupir Astral, a post black metal project. The first opus, L’éternelle Traversée, was released on the Austrian label Talheim Records in 2015. Currently, STN is working on the second album, which should be recorded during 2022.
2022 was another important milestone for STN, as he met Enigmus. They decided to work together on Enigmus’ project: Acte V.
Contrary to many musical acts that dilutes their negativity as they progress through releases, STN reaches ever deeper in his quest.
Esoterism, occultism, symbolism, as well as the “Grand Cosmic Whole”, have always been his obsession, which can be perceived through markers left on his journey.
