The album cover art is a photograph of a snowy countryside, a barren highway, and four young children in snowsuits lying motionless on the ground. With such an apocalyptic title for the album, as well as the forlorn cover art, one could only conceive that the imagery invoked by the music within would be of a most ominous and unnerving nature. Anthony Gonzalez and Nicolas Fromageau (and special guests upon occasion) are collectively known as the entity M83, wielding synthesizers and obscure machined rhythms with the precision of maddeningly meticulous surgeons.
As the disc begins, a quarry of small birds can be heard, yet they are soon dissected and crushed; a maelstrom of synthetic movements follows as the album gives way to the true nature of the music, and I am swept in the wash of fury and emotion. Buzzing stringed symphonies battling for breath are unwavering in their assault. Instruments barely recognizable to the human ears are digitally stripped and harmonically fused within the intense compositions. The work is subtle yet intense, dark and beautiful; summoning forth emotions from deep within and bringing them to the surface, only to have them numbed by the icy cold droning movements.
The album as a whole is utterly massive in sound, purely experimental, and resonates far beyond what you might possibly expect. If there were a fault within the gem itself, it would be that the sheer relentlessness of the music is at times numbing beyond hope. But then again, maybe that's the entire point of Dead Cities, Red Seas, & Lost Ghosts.
