French progressive visionaries Hypno5e announce new album and share first single

French progressive visionaries Hypno5e have announced their new album Trame Noire, set for release on 6th November via Pelagic Records. They have also unveiled the first single ‘Lost Fires’, along with a cinematic music video.

Stream and pre-order here: https://orcd.co/hypno5e

On the new single and video, the band comment:

“This film seeks to explore territory as a living, mutable space – one that resists geography and instead unfolds as an extension of the unseen. As its contours shift and dissolve, buried layers of the self begin to emerge, not as memories to be reclaimed, but as quiet, elusive presences that have always existed beneath perception. The landscape becomes a threshold where the visible and the invisible continuously reshape one another, revealing an interior world in perpetual transformation. Rather than offering answers, the film embraces disorientation as a way of encountering what lies dormant, allowing the unknown to surface with the unsettling familiarity of something that was never truly lost.”

Since 2003, Hypno5e have made a distinct, indelible mark on the progressive heavy music scene. Their self-styled ‘cinematic metal’ mixes heavy music, the avant-garde, post-rock, immersive samples and Latin American influences across widescreen songs. On their much-anticipated seventh album, Trame Noire, they continue their unique journey.

Trame Noire is named after the French term for “dark infrastructure”: urban architecture designed to preserve the blackness of the night for nocturnal species. It tells the story of a protagonist who confronts his trauma over the course of one night, as every insect, every flap of a wing and every change in temperature brings back long-buried memories.

Parallel to the new album release and celebrating their over 20 years of existence, Hypno5e are releasing a complete discography 13LP boxset, which features the new album alongside the studio albums Sheol (2023), A Distant Dark Source (2019), Alba (2018), Shores of the Abstract Line (2016), Acid Mist Tomorrow (2012) as well as debut album Des Deux L’une Est L’autre (2007), the latter for the first time on vinyl.

Track list:

Side A
1. Lost Fires
2. Falmer

Side B
3. Molecular Angel
5. Bare Bones
6. Trame Noire

Album opener ‘Lost Fires’ rises from lonely keys to a section driven by Jessua’s lush vocals, followed by hulking guitars. ‘Falmer’ offers some of the sweetest and hardest moments of Hypno5e’s career: a hypnotic detour evokes the prime of Pink Floyd, then crashes into a metallic thunder that sounds like Gojira gone black metal. ‘Molecular Angel’ channels old-school prog, drums clamouring beneath gorgeous singing and ambient instruments, and ‘Bare Bones’ is a guitar-powered attack, incorporating wild leads and hammering thuds. The 10-minute title track is a suitably dynamic finale, but it remains consistent in its utter, bittersweet beauty.

Trame Noire was approached quite differently to their previous work, opting for a more organic sound. The band limited their use of samples to reflect the lyrics’ focus on one voice and one character. Plus, they used a warmer, looser style of production: less traditionally tech-metal, more inspired by the masterpieces of 70s psychedelic rock.

Even the artwork – painted by Emmanuel’s father, co-lyricist and frequent collaborator Thierry Jessua – is a raw, unrefined sketch, more human than what was seen on past covers. “This time I wanted to discover another language,” Emmanuel commented. “Every album should tell its story differently. I never want Hypno5e to become predictable.”

All this evolution also reflects the fact that Trame Noire was the first album to be made from start to finish with Hypno5e’s current lineup, rounded out by co-guitarist Jonathan Maurois, bassist Charles Villanueva and drummer Pierre Rettien.
“The new lineup brings different atmospheres,” Emmanuel continues. “It doesn’t mean that Hypno5e is going to be this way forever now, but I think there was a more direct and free way of composing. Everybody had more of a say on the decisions and the structures we put on the album.”

Trame Noire is another bold statement in a career defined by non-conformity. Shorter, warmer and presented in a totally different way to previous works, it ensures that Hypno5e remain one of one, even after more than two decades.